Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 1023

This morning I was reading a snippet about Hong Kong changing its drinking laws in order to curb “ Club 7-Eleven ” and it made mention of the “ country ” being the freest economy in the world according to the Heritage Foundation.

I was immediately curious and so I looked up their  2018 Index of Economic Freedom . Below are the top 10 countries. Apparently Hong Kong has been #1 for the last 24 consecutive years.

The Heritage Foundation describes economic freedom as “the fundamental right of every human to control his or her own labor and property.” 

And to measure this they look at 12 aspects of economic freedom, which are grouped into the following 4 categories: rule of law; government size; regulatory efficiency; and market openness.

If you’re really keen, there’s also this free book that was published alongside the 2018 index. But come to think of it, this index appears to have very little to do with lax alcohol laws.

Chris Dixon’s recent piece on why decentralization matters is currently making the rounds online. It clearly explains the first two eras of the internet and how the third era is developing as we speak. Cue decentralized cryptonetworks.

I particularly like how he describes the relationship that centralized platforms – like Facebook – have to their users and to their complements (other businesses, software developers, creators, and so on). 

Here are two graphs from his article :

In the early days it’s all about cooperation and doing everything you can to attract users. The platform gets more valuable the more users are on it and so the immediate goal is to build up the network effects and lock people in.

But as the platform grows, the relationship flips (top of the S-curve). In Dixon’s words , it becomes a zero-sum game whereby to continue growing the platform starts extracting data from its users and competing with its complements.

The promise of cryptonetworks is that they will do away with many of these negative externalities, but at the same time empower the kind of sophistication that we see today with centralized platforms.

The venture capitalists are circling because a fundamental shift in the architecture of the internet will mean disruption. I’m following it because I want to understand how it may apply to real estate and the built environment.

Yesterday I ordered something from Amazon Prime. The guaranteed delivery time was today before 9pm, but within an hour of ordering the delivery estimate was updated and it ended up arriving on the same day about 5 hours after my order. I thought this was pretty amazing, particularly because the package was a bit time sensitive.

Delivering to individual residences is more expensive than delivering to more centralized businesses and stores. And with the rise of online shopping, UPS now delivers as many as 31 million packages every day . Because of this, every little detail counts. 

Last year the company started installing Bluetooth receivers on the inside of its delivery trucks. If a driver incorrectly loads a package that isn’t on their route, it pushes out a loud beep. (This is one of the many tech and data-driven projects that UPS is working on to ensure it stays competitive.)

Previously there was no final check. If there was a rogue package on the truck, it meant the driver would have to stray from their route, coordinate a handoff, or delay the package for another day. These mishaps can really add up when you’re delivering 31 million packages in a single day.

With Amazon squeezing delivery times and with the  rumors that it’s going to start its own delivery business (to compete directly with UPS and FedEx), one has to wonder about the impact that these volumes will have on our cities. Perhaps autonomous vehicles will really become the new roaming retail outlet – ready to deliver as soon as we click buy.