TLDR;
- As marketing becomes the key differentiator in a world where material functionality is commoditised, there is a real risk of pervasive bullshit (I am yet to read a seminal piece on this).
- Yet, in the pursuit of growth, capital will continue to flow to such areas. This I term, as the rise of the “Nonsense Economy”.
- It is the new frontier of rent-seeking behaviour, and detrimental to the economy.
If you have been following my previous posts, I sum up many observations which culminate into a phenomena we see today.
Premise 5: After millennia of economic development and material innovation, along with the recent premium placed on intangible goods and services, an immaterial “nonsense economy” has taken precedence in our current economic structure.
To caveat, the term “nonsense” economy is not meant to be wholly derisive, nor is this a criticism (anti-capitalist) view of the modern economy. I’ll attempt to maintain an objective tone throughout this. (…but no guarantees).
The current system has served the globalised world very well over the past century. It has brought humanity, as a whole, to new frontiers of development, technology, and relative comfort.
I am curious on how historians a millennia from now will view the Post-World War II era. Given the sheer and rapid advancement in many objective indicators (mortality, longevity), did we preside over a global golden age? Despite many espousing recessions and crises as the “worst” year of all time?
But objective success does not come without radical shifts in the way the world works, nor can it be considered a benign blessing. Instead, there are several key trends that will set the tone for now and the near-future, culminating into the titular “Nonsense economy” of this post.
The end of Functional Innovation
I wrote in an earlier post - that advanced goods and services were once the domain of the niche few in the fields. This is no longer the case. Using the analogy of bicycles, an amateur cyclist (working a month or two in a tech job) could easily buy a very decent carbon fibre bike - narrowing the gap between amateurs and professionals in terms of equipment. The democratisation of high-performance technology is a relatively new phenomenon and is a testament to this trend. As a side note, I would add that the proliferation of a globalised economy nd backward engineering has also made this phenomenon possible as well.
To layer on a bit more meat to the argument, within a mere decade, smartphones have also appeared to reach a plateau. The oft-quoted phrase of “no longe needing to buy the latest Iphone” is representative of this - the returns on the latest versions are too marginal. Yet, from a historical point of view, the device and its invention - in my view - remains an absolute marvel of human innovation that should be celebrated. Likewise, accessing long distance travel, eating premium meat from halfway across the world, and accessing the latest developments in healthcare are now more accessible than at any time in history. And so, after millennia of innovation to produce best-in-class products with a global reach - better, cheaper, faster is no longer a differentiated-enough goal.
Taking Functionality for Granted
Beyond innovation alone - I posit that there is also a widening chasm in understanding between a significant group of a population (Chapter 7 level of development) and the fundamental sectors that humans are critically dependent on (Chapters 2,3). Food, energy, and healthcare are a few - how many modern individuals truly know where their food and energy comes from and the work that is involved?
I believe that a key driver of this trend is the rapid acceleration and additive nature of new chapters in recent years which I had laid out in my earlier post. This has led a large proportion of individuals to exist in multiple degrees of separation from fundamental sectors that provide basic human needs (e.g. agriculture). Just a few centuries ago, I would think that the vast majority of humans used to exist in either one or a maximum of two degrees of separation from such sectors.
Today, the agricultural sector, for many urbanised denizens, remains as a dirty mystery, or a fetishised channel of altruistic energy (i.e. Animal cruelty, GMO). On the latter, it feels that the trade-offs remain unrecognised - who has the right to demand an industry to transform if it meant rising food prices? (Political suicide much?). In other areas, I anecdotally hear stories of the disrespect shown towards overworked doctors; an oil-smeared energy worker; an outsider waste-collector. Does it make sense if
Yet these remain the bedrock of modern societies. And so it is with great disappointment that these are the sectors that the capitalist system has not been able to reward well-enough, despite being so critical to societies’ survival. Instead, roles in finance and technology continue to draw the lion’s share of capital and resources of many rich societies. That said, it is interesting that sustainability is seeing a re-emergence of innovation in these fundamental areas (though less so for healthcare).
Limits to Human remembrance and lesson learning.
“Standing on the shoulders of giants” remains a warmly humble phrase in today’s vernacular - but I foresee this term facing extinction soon. Academics, scholars and wise men of the past were able to remember, document and protect knowledge for the purpose of passing it down to subsequent generations. It was up to their proteges to continue contemplating, challenging and refining it into a purer form of knowledge. The pursuit of correctness and truth has been an undeniable driving force for the intellectuals of the past.
If this practice of wisdom and learning could be analogous to a gentle river of pure, pristine information - I would liken today’s knowledge system to a tsunami of sewage.
The clean water is still there - in theory - it so happens that this time around, it is mixed in with vacuous crap, blobs of vitriolic grease and clumps of used wet wipes written for clicks. Even after sieving out the dirt, (which, like treating water, takes time and energy in itself), there are likely diminishing returns to actual impactful contributions to society. Most of academia seem to be grasping at the frontiers of theory - the applicability of which may never touch the average human being. Ever.
Are there enough once-in-a-lifetime geniuses in each sector to make meaningful, tangible advances? At our current stage of development it may be unlikely to see elegant, and more importantly, impactful applications emerging. The times of Newton Laws of Physics are long gone. Call me when high school sciences introduce contemporary discoveries - that would be a milestone to watch out for. But with that all said and done, I remain a technocratic optimist, and believe that human rationality has a lot more to give with the world - if picked out from the aforementioned tsunami. I am sure there is at least one diamond in the sea.
As a result, I foresee that within a single lifetime - it is becoming harder for a single individual to sieve through that much crap, and still have the ability to purify whatever remaining water even further. Intellectual progress is no longer a given (or rather, just really slow).
And thus…the rise of a Dysfunctional Innovation
So when a civilisation is confronted with:
- Having their basic needs met, and taken for granted;
- Having access to all the knowledge, to the extent of being overwhelmed;
- An inability to make significant-enough, meaningful advances based on your life’s work
But at the same time:
- Facing a continued pressure to differentiate
- A glut of cash as modern monetary theory evolves. (I realise I did not expound on this in earlier posts…the global finance system is YET another important part of this puzzle.)
We are left with :
- A trend to create markets for the purpose of creating profit (want), rather than serving intrinsic demand (need)
- Following on which - an unnatural premium on storytelling and marketing - not necessarily with substance.
- Over-speculation
- The proliferation of Get-rich-easy schemes (e.g. MLM, crypto, investments)
Which (thankyouforyourpatience) leads to the “Nonsense Economy”
And so I conclude, that there has been a rise of the “Nonsense Economy” - where labour and resources are directed to immaterial services that do not provide value to society (or, at worst, harms it) as well as to the creation of unnecessary material demand for things that we don’t need. As alluded to in my earlier series of posts on sustainability - this is absolutely not what we need right now.
While I by no measure believe that this forms the bulk of our economy (yet), as future chapters unfold, we may see more and more jobs and individuals being directed to such roles. This is dangerous. I do, (and have experienced myself), how jobs can shape and individual’s personality. If one day, the vast majority of individuals spend most of their time working for something that adds no value to society - I am loathe to see what such a society/culture might look like.
But structurally - is this the end game? Will humanity be forever doomed to bullshit consumption and bullshit jobs on a dying planet? I explore this theme in a later post.