In a sentence, I feel you've encapsulated the BIGGEST mistake of my generation:
"... the beneficiaries of this system didn’t invest in maintaining the ideas that made their success possible."
We took it for granted. And are paying the price. Predictably, in any ecosystem of increasing entropy, where every gain must be constantly re-consolidated.
Instead of asking, “What is the ROI of this grant in twelve months?” we need to ask, “What foundations will still be standing in fifty years because of this investment?” -
This is a very timely observation about business and power aligning. And why do they always target education and universities in India and now in the US?
And maybe it’s not just about India today, but part of a much longer pattern, from colonial capital to tech capital. And the pattern seems to be the same: contempt for labour, disregard for borders when profit demands it, and alliances with race, caste, or religion whenever convenient.
The saddest part of following the news is watching, yet again, how business leaders behave, whether Ayn Rand–ish industry titans of the colonial era or today’s tech barons, who resemble the profiteers of earlier centuries more than the heroes they once imagined from sci-fi. From railways, telegraphs, and barbed-wire under Empire and nation-states to today’s platforms and data monopolies, those at the ‘cutting edge’ have always aligned with power, not principle.
Their contempt is consistent. They regard or disregard borders when it suits them, moving capital freely while keeping labour chained. They celebrated ‘globalisation’ as long as it extracted cheap hands and cheaper minds from India, while treating the same people like kakoose. The history of labour exploitation, from indentured workers on plantations to coders and delivery riders today, is not a bug in their system; it is their operating system.
And it should come as no surprise that the same leaders cosy up to whichever racial or religious figurehead secures their profits, even as they remain firmly married to their class, race, or caste interests. Yesterday it was colonial governors; today it is ethno-nationalists. Tech leaders rally around racists like Trump; their support was made plain during the searing in and wah wahs televised on Fox TV . At the same time, India’s corporate elite -from Ratan Tata downward- have platformed and lionised Modi, schooled by an ethno-religious, inward-looking male cult whose beliefs are reflected in almost all his economic and trade-related decisions and actions. The praise of tech/industry leaders and prashasti weiring and speaking rewarded in contracts and capital. The result has been the deepening of divides: between the baniya elite and the rest of India, between capital and labour, between caste privilege and those made untouchable not just socially but economically, for decades to come.
- Businesses seem to have always sought out the strongman - naturally. Sadly they are the divider, the one who promises ‘stability’, even if it means hollowing out democracy itself. In the end, the innovations evovle into something that have never been about freedom, and unhealthy profit cloaked in the language of progress.
- What can economists do when markets reward division more than democracy?
- How should we measure progress / growth when its byproduct is instability, violence, and even war?
- What’s the future when capital crosses borders but people/workers cannot?
- Which communities will have the capacity to resist division and violence because of the foundations we build today?
- Should women run the world because it seems ot have been all about patriarchy and men?
- What systems of knowledge and solidarity will survive the next cycle of instability, conflict, or authoritarianism?
"If you don’t maintain them, they decay." This is the consequence of what I have started to call, somewhat facetiously, the 'eschatological liberal idealism' of the late 20th and early 21st Century. Things assumed to be inevitable are in need of no defense.
Great article! Creating an environment that continually invests in core principles is key to sustaining both growth and freedom. However, lopsided benefits of the growth over the past decade has created a need for new institutions and new ideologies - more people need to benefit, more environment and climate impact needs to be incorporated and more social impact of investment needs to be incorporated. My view is we need to invest in the scaffolding of good ideas of before but add new scaffolding for ideas we need in the future as well.
Thank you! This is the most thought provoking essay I have read on why we are where we are today. I would add one more thing though, while there was lack of investment in liberal institutions there was an intellectual movement lead by the Heritage Foundation, Federalist Society, JCN, and others that has shaped heavily our legislative and judicial landscape, propagated by ALEC and funded by the likes of Koch, Leo, Thiel and others. This time it is not a vacuum we face, but rather a well oiled illiberal machine.
Great essay and you make the points so well. Moral infrastructure is hard to build, hard to measure, but the bedrock for so many other things we value economically and socially.
Really cool perspective! But will the times we live in allow for a long reorientation to take hold? The how we "ensure that the scaffolding remains strong enough for the next generation to climb" needs to be fused with an upcoming automation wave, and we have no blueprint for that.
Since the Industrial Revolution there have been periodic automation waves. And we managed to invest in the long term. I don’t think technology is the binding constraint in our times.
Although there were also positive things I wanted to do, a major for my departure from Reason in 2000 was utter demoralization from lack of funds and the widespread belief among libertarian donors, including most of our board, that the magazine was worthless because it didn't make a profit.
While the support for liberal principles is very welcome, the empirical reality which this misses is that the collapse of liberalism in the US was not due to the passivity of business and tech, they actively funded it. You don't get the current crisis in the US without Timothy Mellon, without Peter Thiel, without Marc Andreessen, without Mark Zuckerburg. It's not that SV failed to maintain the scaffolding of freedom, it's that it chose to burn it down.
This is far too exculpatory for far too many people.
Business leaders intentionally side-stepped democratic accountability with a "move fast break stuff" ethos that was explicitly encouraged by the "progress" community. They encouraged (and funded) people to leave liberal arts institutions that teach the values of liberal democracy. The "progress" community not only platformed but celebrated those who were destroying the institutional foundations of a free society, esp Thiel and Musk. And also those who were destroying the ideational foundations of a society with respect for privacy, esp Google and Meta.
"Progress studies" needs to stop and listen to political scientists. Until they do they are operating in ignorance, which is antithetical to true progress. If they continue to refuse then their "progress" is just building bridges to nowhere, as is already observable, and they will continue actively destroying support for liberty, as they already have done. They are like the 1920s futurists who laid track later used by fascists.
Brilliant essay, one of the most thought provoking things I've read recently. Just one point I would like some understanding on, if one were to look at institutions like the Chicago school or Harvard or any of the major universities ( that I presume are the kind of scaffolding we are intending) it would hardly seem they are having a funding issue (atleast Pre Trump), nor would Templeton or any of the funds you cite have stopped supporting said causes. But nonetheless the environment for free thought and action have been vitiated very badly as you say.
Also not sure if many think tanks or the general ecosystem in the west have covered themselves in glory here. Did many of them instead of being bastions of ideas became bastions of ideologies? Was the problem one of the intellectual watchmen not getting support or that they also unilaterally changed their job description?
Brilliant writing. Lots of words of wisdom. The one part that I was thinking hard about was - the person making the gear box assumes someone else will maintain the road. This actually would be the best way to do it, following comparative advantage principles. Business folks must only do what they are meant to do, but then the question arises who works on these public goods. If the answer is the 'State', it is also a reflection of poor functioning/ lack of intellectual capacities in democratic political parties based on principles of free trade, open markets, institution building etc.
My argument isn’t that we should not have specialization or play to comparative advantage. But only making the gear box and not participating in mucicipal elections, or paying taxes or tolls/user fees etc, and simultaneously assume the roads will get built is a bit myopic.
This is a sample of the insane economic theology that rules -- and has ruined -- USA and the west. Milton Friedman, Friedrich Hayek, and the Chicago school are among the leading causes of the collapse of the West's industry (allowing China to take the lead, in both quantity and, now, quality:) Doctorow's enshittification at full scale. As Mariana Mazzucato shows, it is not the "free exchange" of markets that create new technologies and new industries, but the "outright state planning" of the entrepreneurial state, as Mazzucato terms it.
And Mazzucato did not discover anything new. The roots of the entrepreneurial state include first USA Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton -- whose program is best described in this context as mercantilism chained to and guided by the Constitutional mandate to promote the General Welfare.
Here is MIT professor of technology history Merritt Roe Smith, explaining how the US national armories nurtured and dispersed the technology of metal cutting and metal forming machine tools - creating the basis for modern industrial mass production. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNeSthOPd1M&t=3s
That's a very strong defence of the timber that produces just, open, enterprising and socially and morally upright citizens, countries and long life institutions. Good luck.
THE BEST essay I've read all year! Thank you.
In a sentence, I feel you've encapsulated the BIGGEST mistake of my generation:
"... the beneficiaries of this system didn’t invest in maintaining the ideas that made their success possible."
We took it for granted. And are paying the price. Predictably, in any ecosystem of increasing entropy, where every gain must be constantly re-consolidated.
Instead of asking, “What is the ROI of this grant in twelve months?” we need to ask, “What foundations will still be standing in fifty years because of this investment?” -
Is coming with me to my next meeting
Stealing this +1
This is a very timely observation about business and power aligning. And why do they always target education and universities in India and now in the US?
And maybe it’s not just about India today, but part of a much longer pattern, from colonial capital to tech capital. And the pattern seems to be the same: contempt for labour, disregard for borders when profit demands it, and alliances with race, caste, or religion whenever convenient.
The saddest part of following the news is watching, yet again, how business leaders behave, whether Ayn Rand–ish industry titans of the colonial era or today’s tech barons, who resemble the profiteers of earlier centuries more than the heroes they once imagined from sci-fi. From railways, telegraphs, and barbed-wire under Empire and nation-states to today’s platforms and data monopolies, those at the ‘cutting edge’ have always aligned with power, not principle.
Their contempt is consistent. They regard or disregard borders when it suits them, moving capital freely while keeping labour chained. They celebrated ‘globalisation’ as long as it extracted cheap hands and cheaper minds from India, while treating the same people like kakoose. The history of labour exploitation, from indentured workers on plantations to coders and delivery riders today, is not a bug in their system; it is their operating system.
And it should come as no surprise that the same leaders cosy up to whichever racial or religious figurehead secures their profits, even as they remain firmly married to their class, race, or caste interests. Yesterday it was colonial governors; today it is ethno-nationalists. Tech leaders rally around racists like Trump; their support was made plain during the searing in and wah wahs televised on Fox TV . At the same time, India’s corporate elite -from Ratan Tata downward- have platformed and lionised Modi, schooled by an ethno-religious, inward-looking male cult whose beliefs are reflected in almost all his economic and trade-related decisions and actions. The praise of tech/industry leaders and prashasti weiring and speaking rewarded in contracts and capital. The result has been the deepening of divides: between the baniya elite and the rest of India, between capital and labour, between caste privilege and those made untouchable not just socially but economically, for decades to come.
- Businesses seem to have always sought out the strongman - naturally. Sadly they are the divider, the one who promises ‘stability’, even if it means hollowing out democracy itself. In the end, the innovations evovle into something that have never been about freedom, and unhealthy profit cloaked in the language of progress.
- What can economists do when markets reward division more than democracy?
- How should we measure progress / growth when its byproduct is instability, violence, and even war?
- What’s the future when capital crosses borders but people/workers cannot?
- Which communities will have the capacity to resist division and violence because of the foundations we build today?
- Should women run the world because it seems ot have been all about patriarchy and men?
- What systems of knowledge and solidarity will survive the next cycle of instability, conflict, or authoritarianism?
Excellent piece.
"If you don’t maintain them, they decay." This is the consequence of what I have started to call, somewhat facetiously, the 'eschatological liberal idealism' of the late 20th and early 21st Century. Things assumed to be inevitable are in need of no defense.
Great article! Creating an environment that continually invests in core principles is key to sustaining both growth and freedom. However, lopsided benefits of the growth over the past decade has created a need for new institutions and new ideologies - more people need to benefit, more environment and climate impact needs to be incorporated and more social impact of investment needs to be incorporated. My view is we need to invest in the scaffolding of good ideas of before but add new scaffolding for ideas we need in the future as well.
Thank you! This is the most thought provoking essay I have read on why we are where we are today. I would add one more thing though, while there was lack of investment in liberal institutions there was an intellectual movement lead by the Heritage Foundation, Federalist Society, JCN, and others that has shaped heavily our legislative and judicial landscape, propagated by ALEC and funded by the likes of Koch, Leo, Thiel and others. This time it is not a vacuum we face, but rather a well oiled illiberal machine.
Great essay and you make the points so well. Moral infrastructure is hard to build, hard to measure, but the bedrock for so many other things we value economically and socially.
Really cool perspective! But will the times we live in allow for a long reorientation to take hold? The how we "ensure that the scaffolding remains strong enough for the next generation to climb" needs to be fused with an upcoming automation wave, and we have no blueprint for that.
Since the Industrial Revolution there have been periodic automation waves. And we managed to invest in the long term. I don’t think technology is the binding constraint in our times.
Although there were also positive things I wanted to do, a major for my departure from Reason in 2000 was utter demoralization from lack of funds and the widespread belief among libertarian donors, including most of our board, that the magazine was worthless because it didn't make a profit.
And this has happened across the board, not just to Reason. And now we are all paying for this.
While the support for liberal principles is very welcome, the empirical reality which this misses is that the collapse of liberalism in the US was not due to the passivity of business and tech, they actively funded it. You don't get the current crisis in the US without Timothy Mellon, without Peter Thiel, without Marc Andreessen, without Mark Zuckerburg. It's not that SV failed to maintain the scaffolding of freedom, it's that it chose to burn it down.
This is far too exculpatory for far too many people.
Business leaders intentionally side-stepped democratic accountability with a "move fast break stuff" ethos that was explicitly encouraged by the "progress" community. They encouraged (and funded) people to leave liberal arts institutions that teach the values of liberal democracy. The "progress" community not only platformed but celebrated those who were destroying the institutional foundations of a free society, esp Thiel and Musk. And also those who were destroying the ideational foundations of a society with respect for privacy, esp Google and Meta.
"Progress studies" needs to stop and listen to political scientists. Until they do they are operating in ignorance, which is antithetical to true progress. If they continue to refuse then their "progress" is just building bridges to nowhere, as is already observable, and they will continue actively destroying support for liberty, as they already have done. They are like the 1920s futurists who laid track later used by fascists.
Brilliant essay, one of the most thought provoking things I've read recently. Just one point I would like some understanding on, if one were to look at institutions like the Chicago school or Harvard or any of the major universities ( that I presume are the kind of scaffolding we are intending) it would hardly seem they are having a funding issue (atleast Pre Trump), nor would Templeton or any of the funds you cite have stopped supporting said causes. But nonetheless the environment for free thought and action have been vitiated very badly as you say.
Also not sure if many think tanks or the general ecosystem in the west have covered themselves in glory here. Did many of them instead of being bastions of ideas became bastions of ideologies? Was the problem one of the intellectual watchmen not getting support or that they also unilaterally changed their job description?
Brilliant writing. Lots of words of wisdom. The one part that I was thinking hard about was - the person making the gear box assumes someone else will maintain the road. This actually would be the best way to do it, following comparative advantage principles. Business folks must only do what they are meant to do, but then the question arises who works on these public goods. If the answer is the 'State', it is also a reflection of poor functioning/ lack of intellectual capacities in democratic political parties based on principles of free trade, open markets, institution building etc.
My argument isn’t that we should not have specialization or play to comparative advantage. But only making the gear box and not participating in mucicipal elections, or paying taxes or tolls/user fees etc, and simultaneously assume the roads will get built is a bit myopic.
This is a sample of the insane economic theology that rules -- and has ruined -- USA and the west. Milton Friedman, Friedrich Hayek, and the Chicago school are among the leading causes of the collapse of the West's industry (allowing China to take the lead, in both quantity and, now, quality:) Doctorow's enshittification at full scale. As Mariana Mazzucato shows, it is not the "free exchange" of markets that create new technologies and new industries, but the "outright state planning" of the entrepreneurial state, as Mazzucato terms it.
And Mazzucato did not discover anything new. The roots of the entrepreneurial state include first USA Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton -- whose program is best described in this context as mercantilism chained to and guided by the Constitutional mandate to promote the General Welfare.
Here is MIT professor of technology history Merritt Roe Smith, explaining how the US national armories nurtured and dispersed the technology of metal cutting and metal forming machine tools - creating the basis for modern industrial mass production. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNeSthOPd1M&t=3s
That's a very strong defence of the timber that produces just, open, enterprising and socially and morally upright citizens, countries and long life institutions. Good luck.
Absolutely brilliant ! Thank you !