dead potential

In theory, the efficient market should avoid, or at least punish, money flowing into sectors where it is wholly wasted. Over time, it should be shown that money flows primarily into sectors where it improves… something, and if it flows into inefficient ventures, that flow is punished, hopefully swiftly, by imminent business failure.

The problems arise at the most cursory inspection of that theory: what is considered wasteful money? What is the metric we’re trying to improve? What is considered wasteful spending?

The United States has, in aggregate, improved the overall average household income. By every metric, this is true, but looking at specific metrics from specific angles, the story is tainted: average income has gone up, but this has largely been carried by income inequality. Spending power has decreased while the richest 10% has seen their wealth skyrocket.

If one is to believe that the most efficient way for money to flow is toward the individuals who have “proven” their ability to acquire wealth, then the market is functioning as it should. If one is to believe that the most efficient way for money to flow is for it to be dispersed widely to improve the standard of living for as many people as possible, questions arise. By the former definition, the United States is doing incredibly well. By the latter definition, we are failing and are being trounced by China, a country that has lifted a massive population of people out of abject, starvation-level poverty, and has their fair share of billionaires as well.

I get irritated about wasted potential. It’s not irritating to me the way it’s irritating to right-libertarians, it’s irritating to me because if we’re going to set all this money on fire doing Hypercapitalism, to do so in such an inefficient manner is like setting the ship on fire and flipping off the people stuck on board.

If we’re going to do AI, it should be used to cure cancer, dementia, give us access to a 3-day work week, UBI, endless possibility. Right now, it appears as though it is primarily being used for… slop production, the furtherance of scams at an even unholier scale, and the creation of companies whose sole purpose is to squeeze money out of suckers and bubble it up to VC’s.

If we’re going to do cryptocurrency, it should be used to anonymously send money to Gaza, Ukraine, Iran and Minneapolis for mutual aid. Right now, it appeas as though it is primarily being used for… hypergambling, romance scams, and the creation of more vaporware used to squeeze more money out of more suckers and bubble it up to VC’s.

There’s enormous potential in AI, web3/DeFi, privacy tech, etc. but so much of it is being squandered in playing the VC game, chasing a new funding round from people with 0 interest in meaningfully affecting the world in any direction that does not lead to them being significantly richer and more powerful. So much of it is squandered using fundamentally transformative tech to build always-on hyper-casinos. We took the ability to network and speak to people across the entire world (social media) and bastardized it into an advertisement network. We’re taking the seeds of AGI and bastardied it into a slop production line to take the first generation in modern history to become dumber than their parents’ generation and make them even more braindead.

There’s enormous potential in humanity, but we’re squandering it on wars over centuries old religious differences, invisible lines drawn in the sand, the furtherance of wealth. We could be exploring the stars but instead we are using the same technology we’d use to traverse the cosmos to blow holes in oil fields. We are setting children on fire on the pyres of war when those children could grow to become the doctors that cure cancer, the astronauts who walk Martian sands for the first time, the leaders of the new world.

But instead, all we have are dead children, burning capital and dead potential.