The writing
Start here.
Most weeks I publish an essay grounded in history, real numbers and the physical world. Here’s where to begin, and what the beat covers.
A few places to start
Show Us the Megawatts — California Is Exporting the AI Boom
California talks about leading artificial intelligence while the power-hungry infrastructure that makes AI possible is being built elsewhere. Why aren’t we leading the new economy?
The California Abundance Fund
What if Californians became owners — not merely ratepayers — of the energy and infrastructure the AI economy requires? Our middle class should benefit from the use of its data.
Who Is Drinking Panama’s Milkshake?
Every once in a while you may receive a dispatch from some other shore, on some other topic.
What the essays cover
- EnergyThe enormous new demand coming from AI, electric transportation, advanced manufacturing and an increasingly automated economy.
- HousingWhy one of the wealthiest places on Earth behaves as though shelter must remain artificially scarce — and why the problem isn’t land, but process.
- Water, ports and transportationThe infrastructure required to support a growing, productive state.
- New cities and special economic zonesAmbitious ideas that the machinery of hungry governmental process squeezes out of the room.
- California in the PacificOur place in a larger Pacific region, including new possibilities in deepening our historic relationship with Baja California.
- AI and life after workFor thousands of years humans have found purpose in work. What happens when we hand our work-life to our tools?
- OwnershipWays ordinary Californians might share directly in the new public infrastructure and the vast wealth enabling the new economy.
How it works
Everything is free. Each new column arrives directly in your email — you do not need to become a Substack member, and you never need to come back to a website. The full archive lives at erichallsub.substack.com.
These essays run on history, real numbers and the occasional story, because the future usually shows up first in the data, then in the physical world, and only later in the headlines. Some of it will be hopeful. Some of it will be uncomfortable. None of it will ask you to settle for less.
Prosperous societies don’t ration their way to prosperity. They build — and ordinary people share in what gets built.
If that sounds like an argument worth following.
Subscribe free. It’s the best way to be there as the book takes shape.
Subscribe free on Substack →