Capitalism

Humans have accomplished remarkable things throughout our history. Yet today, despite these achievements, we appear to be backsliding while the world burns. We face enormous challenges with little evidence of meaningful progress beyond political and corporate greenwashing campaigns designed to keep consumption—“business as usual”—humming along. Van Gogh’s Starry Night

When examining human behavior, you can usually answer the “why?” behind most phenomena by analyzing incentives. This principle applies universally—from economics to politics, where elected officials often prioritize certain interests over broader constituent needs. There’s a reason the phrase “follow the money” has become ubiquitous. Many people skip the step of examining incentive structures, then express confusion when others act in ways that seem counterintuitive. Yet once you look at the underlying incentives, motivations typically become clear. Most of the dysfunction we see in modern capitalism can be traced to poorly designed incentive systems.

Once upon a time, the US government enforced antitrust legislation. One of the most famous examples of this is the case of Standard Oil, which remains the textbook example of monopoly breakup taught in economics and law schools worldwide. To understand what happened to Standard Oil, we need to take a short walk back in time through history. The year is 1890, and the US Congress is a well-functioning body with rational officials whose brains still function at a high enough level to pass sensible legislation.

By 2050, scientists predict there will be more plastic than fish in our oceans by weight. Last month, I found myself wandering around Muji, phone in hand, about to buy yet another kitchen gadget I didn’t need. That moment of consumer autopilot made me question: how much of my consumption actually improves my life versus simply contributing to our ecological crisis?

The Invisible Influence # One important (and mostly non-mainstream) concept is the idea of manufactured consent. The idea was originally described in a book authored by Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman in the 1980s. For a quick summary, check out this video on YouTube which provides a great overview (use yt-dlp to completely avoid the ads).

I was recently trolling someone on Reddit, and in a brief (and regrettable) fit of passion I made a remark only I could love about “transcending the bullshit”. I have often repeated that I intend to one day publish a book titled “Everything is Bullshit”, in honour of the late David Graeber’s Bullshit Jobs, but extending to pretty much all facets of society.

I was reading Hacker News comments and someone was complaining about how they weren’t able to find a job in computers anymore due to ageism in tech. Reading this, something occurred to me which I thought was worth writing about, which is the idea of malleability. First of all, I agree that ageism in tech is a thing and it’s a problem for experienced people trying to find a new job. In a capitalist society you want to hire the cheapest employees who can “get the job done”, and experience is often grossly under weighted. My hypothesis for why it occurs has to do with the fact that some people perceive more experienced technologists as more expensive and less malleable.

I saw a discussion on Reddit about entrepreneurship recently that got me thinking. What’s the point of being an entrepreneur when the odds of success are incredibly low? This is especially true if you’re low on resources or clout. Beyond the Silicon Valley Narrative # The dominant narrative about entrepreneurship has become increasingly narrow: raise venture capital, grow at all costs, aim for a massive exit, and hopefully become a billionaire. It’s the script that’s celebrated in tech publications, glorified by accelerators, and drilled into the minds of computer science graduates.