I wish I was a high-profile VC. Then I too would be writing essays exhorting people to take on high amounts of risk and to spend their 20s and 30s grinding through 60 hour workweeks, so I could grow my portfolio. Because, we're losing to China!
Honestly, it has never been clear to me why "growth" was the metric that we, as a society, have been optimizing for. Who stands to benefit? You? The middle class? Everyone? Or... wealthy investors and a few lucky founders?
Why not focus on, say, average income per citizen (adjusted for purchasing power)? Or even more radical, why not stop using money as a proxy for wealth, and start optimizing for average citizen well-being? Is China beating us on that point?
Or why not see further and optimize for the growth of our scientific knowledge and our technological capabilities?
Economic growth is generally praised because it is a weak proxy for things such as the wealth of a society (assumed to be well distributed) and its technological progress. So why not directly aim for these core goals?
> Honestly, it has never been clear to me why "growth" was the metric that we, as a society, have been optimizing for. Who stands to benefit? You? The middle class? Everyone? Or... wealthy investors and a few lucky founders?
I think the answer to this is pretty obvious when you look around.
"95% of the gains from the [recent economic] recovery have gone to the richest 1% of people, whose share of overall income is once again close to its highest level in a century." [1]
When you optimize for "economic growth" you are optimizing for the well-being of the already well-off.
Growth is the metric for success because we currently use the wealth of the richest as our benchmark for success. How much marginal gain in terms of quality of life do these richest people even get from the growth?
Much of what you say seems reminiscent of The Venus Project and The Zeitgeist Movement. Although both projects leave much to be desired in actual execution, their purported aims for moving away from our current societal framework (based on artificial scarcity, money-market economics, etc.) is rather commendable.
Who stands to benefit from growth? Everyone. The population is increasing, so we need economic growth to at least maintain employment.
This reminds me of something a friend mentioned when we were talking about American exceptionalism and the disproportionate number of inventions made relative to the population.
He saw a documentary where they interviewed a couple that owned an ice cream cart in Paris. The couple said that they take the month of August off for vacation. This perplexed the interviewer- but how? Isn't August the best sales month for ice cream?
The family said, essentially- we were born in this class, we'll die in this class, and the government more or less guarantees that. Why work any harder?
>>Honestly, it has never been clear to me why "growth" was the metric that we, as a society, have been optimizing for. Who stands to benefit? You? The middle class? Everyone? Or... wealthy investors and a few lucky founders?
Growth of who, or what? Focus on optimizing personal growth, either in your skillset or personal income, and everything else should take care of itself.
Honestly, it has never been clear to me why "growth" was the metric that we, as a society, have been optimizing for. Who stands to benefit? You? The middle class? Everyone? Or... wealthy investors and a few lucky founders?
Why not focus on, say, average income per citizen (adjusted for purchasing power)? Or even more radical, why not stop using money as a proxy for wealth, and start optimizing for average citizen well-being? Is China beating us on that point?
Or why not see further and optimize for the growth of our scientific knowledge and our technological capabilities?
Economic growth is generally praised because it is a weak proxy for things such as the wealth of a society (assumed to be well distributed) and its technological progress. So why not directly aim for these core goals?