#0010 An era of abundance, The Big Decoupling, A Post-Growth World is Coming
Welcome to Constant Flux, a weekly lens taking a systemic view on the polycrisis.
Today: Abundance, decoupling, post-growth, ruthlessness, care, resilience, mysticism, misalignment, coordination, redistribution, techno-optimism, toolmakers, structural inertia, imagination, flourishing, contestability, GLP-1, disruption, mystic-modern, system design.
What we call progress is the exchange of one nuisance for another nuisance.
— Havelock Ellis
By Disaster or Design: A Post-Growth World is Coming
The story of endless economic growth is ending one way or another.
Growth has been the guiding idea behind how a lot of institutions function. It shaped how we build, plan, and coordinate. Without growth, the system loses its direction (kind of like that Fredric Jameson quote, "it's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism") unless we find new principles to organize around, like care, resilience, and stability.
So, the question is; how to keep things working when growth is no longer the goal? Human flourishing as a goal would be a great start.
The article is based on a paper I have not read yet. Probably never will? Maybe you will?
The missing tech case for how we create an era of abundance
This piece lays out a case for a future of abundance powered by AI, clean energy, and biotech. I agree with the spirit of it. Building tools is one of humanity’s deepest drives. It is how we extend ourselves, it's how we imagine new possibilities.
But tools alone do not change outcomes. Without shifts in the systems they operate within, they just reinforce the status quo. What I want to say I guess is that we are not short on solutions. We are short on structures.
That should be obvious by now...
If we want abundance to mean something real, it needs to come with a redesign of how we coordinate, distribute, and decide.
The optimism is welcome. But lacks depth.
Should we expect the future to be good?
This piece challenges rational altruist Paul Christiano’s view that the future will likely be good because those who care most about it will shape it (I have not read the original article).
My take is that care != influence but ruthlessness quite often does. I think the reality of today shows that influential actors misaligned with humanity as a whole is pretty much shaping the trajectory.
That does not mean the future is doomed. I am generally optimistic. But not by default. Only if we design for it. Good outcomes will depend on good institutions
But hey! The future may be good. But only if we make it so.
The Big Decoupling
This article has a great observation. Its main point is that work is becoming disconnected from reward, and that this will change how people see value, effort, and success. People who’ve trained hard for years now watch others achieve similar results in months with GLP-1 drugs. That creates a lot of uncertainty, not just in how people act, but in how they see themselves. Great observation of a big cultural shift.
Ripples
Switch-lit
A browser-based platform for collaborative fiction and poetry, where two writers take turns crafting chapters of a single story.
https://pudding.cool/
A digital publication that explains ideas with visual essays. Very cool indeed. Like
this one that tries to predict the the price and quality of a bottle of wine based on the animal on the bottle.
The Mystical Roots of Alcoholics Anonymous
AA is more than a support group; it's a form of practical mysticism.