economics

Mechanism Design for Harm Reduction. I’ve just posted a new paper on SSRN:

Mechanism Design for Harm Reduction: Game Theory and Social Choice for Carceral MOUD and Recovery Institutions

👉 Read it here: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=6173484

The core question: Why do our institutions so often default to punitive, carceral responses to addiction, even when harm reduction and MOUD improve health and reduce mortality?

Using tools from mechanism design and social choice, the paper argues that the “bad” equilibria we see in overdose and addiction policy are not random failures. They emerge from incentive structures that reward visible punishment, central control, and risk‑avoidant bureaucracy over decentralized, evidence‑based care.

A few themes that may interest folks in economics, public policy, and health:

How carceral logics get embedded in funding rules, compliance regimes, and performance metrics.

Why local actors can be systematically steered away from harm reduction, even when they know it works.

What institutional reforms could realign incentives toward treatment, recovery, and community‑based support.

If you work in health policy, criminal justice, behavioral health, or are simply interested in how mechanism design can illuminate real‑world institutional failures, I’d welcome your feedback, questions, and critiques.

An Introduction. My name is Eric Stevens 

I want to be clear about who I am and why I am here.

I recently published my book, Evolution Mine: Genesis.
You can read it for free here:
https://nowweevolve.com/view-the-book

I made it free on purpose. The idea matters more than the money.

For the last 15 years, I have been working inside the systems most people only argue about from the outside. Global trade. Manufacturing. Supply chains. Policy. Commodities. Labor. Capital flow.

I helped Vietnam enter the World Trade Organization in 2007, ironically on my birthday. I have worked with governments, factories, military-adjacent systems, and private industry. I have seen how decisions made far from communities quietly reshape jobs, materials, and power at the local level.

Most of my life was spent in Los Angeles. I recently moved to Dallas, where the political and cultural polarization is impossible to ignore. The fights feel louder. The solutions feel thinner.

I am a father of six. I am married to an incredible Salvadoran woman. I am politically independent, not because I avoid responsibility, but because I do not believe any single ideology owns the truth.

What I am building is not a movement in the emotional sense. It is an economic one.

Our society talks about systems as if they are beliefs. They are not. Systems are built on inputs. Commodities. Materials. Energy. Logistics. Whoever controls those controls everything downstream.

That insight sits at the center of everything I do.

Through these platforms, I am working on one integrated effort:

Now We Evolve
https://nowweevolve.com

The Bioeconomy Foundation
https://thebioeconomyfoundation.org

American Fiber Group
https://theamericanfibergroup.com

Together, they focus on one question most debates avoid.

What happens if we change the materials the economy depends on?

Hemp and bamboo are not symbols. They are commodities. They grow locally. They scale horizontally. They support regional processing. They anchor manufacturing close to communities. They change money flow, job creation, and who holds power.

This work is not anti-capitalist or pro-corporate. It is pro-reality.

If you want different outcomes, you do not argue harder. You replace the inputs.

That is what I am here to discuss.
Not outrage. Not slogans.
Industrial math, material systems, and practical paths forward.

If that resonates, you are in the right place.

California hit the wall? So I live in california and so not a newsom fan. I think his ideas cost us way too much. His taxes are killing us. So to list out a couple points -

1. The "Big Business" Exodus

The Paul Mitchell and Blue Diamond departures aren't isolated incidents; they are part of a trend where the "math" of staying in California no longer adds up for legacy companies.

• The Revenue Trap: California relies on the top 1% of earners for nearly half of its income tax. When a billionaire like John Paul DeJoria moves his HQ to Texas, it’s not just about the jobs—it’s a massive hit to the state's tax base.

   

• The Regulation Wall: Many companies leaving in 2026 cite the state’s aggressive new climate mandates and labor laws as the final straw. They feel the state is making it too expensive to simply exist.

2. The Oil Pipeline & Energy Crisis

There is a major showdown happening right now over the Las Flores pipeline system.

• The Probe: Just this week (February 4, 2026), federal investigators (DOJ and SEC) began demanding documents from Sable Offshore, the company trying to restart offshore oil pipelines near Santa Barbara.

   

• The Conflict: Newsom’s administration has been fighting to keep these lines closed to meet climate goals, while critics argue that shutting down local production just makes California more dependent on expensive foreign oil and drives up gas prices for regular people.

3. The High-Speed Rail "Burn"

The High-Speed Rail remains the ultimate symbol of government waste for many.

• The Money Pit: Despite being billions over budget and decades behind, the state is doubling down. Just last month (January 2026), they launched a new push to find private investors because the state can no longer afford to fund it alone.

• The Deficit Link: It is hard for the Governor to justify spending billions on a train through the Central Valley when he is simultaneously cutting healthcare benefits for immigrants and stripping funding from homelessness programs to plug a $3 billion to $18 billion deficit (depending on whose math you trust).

So i am wondering if Sheriff Chad Bianco ideas would not be good as well?

I myself find it quite conserning that some of these old business are leaving my suspect is high costs.

Hot take: Greenland's Masterstroke. Greenland agrees to voluntarily join the United States on the condition of immediate statehood. It then uses that leverage to push the US government towards more sane governance, including the impeachment of Donald Trump, the reinstatement and strengthening of institutional guardrails, and the repair of ties with the EU. Once those objectives are achieved, Greenland then secedes, gaining full independence with the consent of a future US administration.

An Introduction. My name is Eric Stevens 

I want to be clear about who I am and why I am here.

I recently published my book, Evolution Mine: Genesis.
You can read it for free here:
https://nowweevolve.com/view-the-book

I made it free on purpose. The idea matters more than the money.

For the last 15 years, I have been working inside the systems most people only argue about from the outside. Global trade. Manufacturing. Supply chains. Policy. Commodities. Labor. Capital flow.

I helped Vietnam enter the World Trade Organization in 2007, ironically on my birthday. I have worked with governments, factories, military-adjacent systems, and private industry. I have seen how decisions made far from communities quietly reshape jobs, materials, and power at the local level.

Most of my life was spent in Los Angeles. I recently moved to Dallas, where the political and cultural polarization is impossible to ignore. The fights feel louder. The solutions feel thinner.

I am a father of six. I am married to an incredible Salvadoran woman. I am politically independent, not because I avoid responsibility, but because I do not believe any single ideology owns the truth.

What I am building is not a movement in the emotional sense. It is an economic one.

Our society talks about systems as if they are beliefs. They are not. Systems are built on inputs. Commodities. Materials. Energy. Logistics. Whoever controls those controls everything downstream.

That insight sits at the center of everything I do.

Through these platforms, I am working on one integrated effort:

Now We Evolve
https://nowweevolve.com

The Bioeconomy Foundation
https://thebioeconomyfoundation.org

American Fiber Group
https://theamericanfibergroup.com

Together, they focus on one question most debates avoid.

What happens if we change the materials the economy depends on?

Hemp and bamboo are not symbols. They are commodities. They grow locally. They scale horizontally. They support regional processing. They anchor manufacturing close to communities. They change money flow, job creation, and who holds power.

This work is not anti-capitalist or pro-corporate. It is pro-reality.

If you want different outcomes, you do not argue harder. You replace the inputs.

That is what I am here to discuss.
Not outrage. Not slogans.
Industrial math, material systems, and practical paths forward.

If that resonates, you are in the right place.

AMA with Liv Boeree on incentive traps, game theory, and win-wins. AMA with Liv Boeree -poker champion with a background in astrophysics here to slay Molog- & Jordan Myska Allen on incentive traps, game theory, and win-wins | UpTrust launch event | #heywait, can we do better?

AMA with Adrian Grenier. Wednesday 2/4 at 7:00 PM CT

Entourage star who at the top of the Hollywood game pivoted to an integral spiritual path and farmstead

Hello. Hi everyone — I’m Tarnell Brown. Still figuring out how this site works, but I’m jumping right in. I’m an economist who studies how institutional and structural incentives can hide the real costs of discrimination, especially for people who are already starting from behind. A lot of my work lives at the intersection of economics, policy, and fairness, asking how we can raise the cost of discriminatory outcomes without killing innovation or choice.

If that sounds like your lane, I write longer essays, replication notes, and policy briefs over at Meanderings of an Eccentric Economist (eccentricecon.com), where I explore how institutions shape real-world opportunity for disadvantaged groups. Looking forward to seeing what UpTrust becomes and finding the people here who like to argue about incentives, discrimination, and institutional design in good faith.

The Cost of Letting main stream media and social media Do Our Thinking. Lately I’ve been thinking about how both the political left and right are pushing narratives through social media, and a lot of what’s being shared is made up of half-truths or no truth at all. It feels like emotions are being intentionally poked and prodded to build followers around ideologies, not facts.

Honestly, you can’t even scroll social media anymore without stopping to ask yourself, “Is this actually true?” And that the norm now.

Before you can even consider the message, you have to research it just to figure out if it’s real. That alone tells me things are out of control.

What worries me most is how much of this stuff gets absorbed emotionally. A lot of people don’t consciously assess what they believe or take the time to verify it. If something aligns with how they feel, it gets accepted and then repeated.

Sometimes something goes viral almost instantly and gets accepted as truth, whether it’s fact or fiction, simply because it hits people emotionally.

And I get it. When something hits you emotionally and connects to a belief you already have, human nature is to accept it as truth, because our own biases want us to believe it.

If this keeps going, I really think it damages our ability to function as a country, because we lose a shared understanding of what’s real and what isn’t. Everything becomes narrative instead of truth.

I think part of the problem is that we’re becoming mentally lazy. We stop thinking critically and let confirmation bias run unchecked, and it just keeps building on itself.

The solution is simple, even if it’s not easy. Slow down. Question what we’re seeing. Separate facts from feelings. Think logically before reacting emotionally. Truth shouldn’t depend on which side it benefits.

Just something I’ve been thinking about.

v/r Russ

If people cannot change the commodities society depends on, then protest alone will never produce lasting change.

Protest is good at signaling pain.
It is not designed to reroute capital.

That’s not a moral judgment. It’s a structural one.

Modern power does not primarily respond to outrage. It responds to demand signals, procurement contracts, financing structures, and commodity dependency. As long as the same materials flow through the same systems, the same outcomes repeat, regardless of who is in office or what slogans trend.

This is why so many movements burn hot and fade.
They change language, but not inputs.
They change narratives, but not supply chains.
They raise awareness, but leave money flowing exactly where it always has.

Real change begins when money moves differently.

Jobs follow commodities.
Communities follow jobs.
Political behavior follows economic reality.

My work focuses on building that missing middle layer, where social intention becomes economic participation. Through platforms like nowweevolve.com and thebioeconomyfoundation.org, I’m working on redirecting consumer demand, public funding, and private capital toward regenerative materials and domestic production systems that create real work, especially in rural communities.

This isn’t anti-protest. It’s post-protest.

If we want durable change, we have to give people a way to participate economically in the solution. Not just speak, but buy, build, fund, and work their way into a different system.

Social change scales when money flow changes.
Everything else is commentary.

If people cannot change the commodities society depends on, then protest alone will never produce lasting change.

Protest is good at signaling pain.
It is not designed to reroute capital.

That’s not a moral judgment. It’s a structural one.

Modern power does not primarily respond to outrage. It responds to demand signals, procurement contracts, financing structures, and commodity dependency. As long as the same materials flow through the same systems, the same outcomes repeat, regardless of who is in office or what slogans trend.

This is why so many movements burn hot and fade.
They change language, but not inputs.
They change narratives, but not supply chains.
They raise awareness, but leave money flowing exactly where it always has.

Real change begins when money moves differently.

Jobs follow commodities.
Communities follow jobs.
Political behavior follows economic reality.

My work focuses on building that missing middle layer, where social intention becomes economic participation. Through platforms like nowweevolve.com and thebioeconomyfoundation.org, I’m working on redirecting consumer demand, public funding, and private capital toward regenerative materials and domestic production systems that create real work, especially in rural communities.

This isn’t anti-protest. It’s post-protest.

If we want durable change, we have to give people a way to participate economically in the solution. Not just speak, but buy, build, fund, and work their way into a different system.

Social change scales when money flow changes.
Everything else is commentary.

Incorruptible Organizations AMA with Eric Ries. Wednesday 2/4 at 3:00 PM CT

Lean Startup author who now focuses on legal structures to protect mission-driven organizations from corruption. incorruptible.co

Free book giveaway! Register here.