Continuous growth is cancer
christianheilmann.com
Continuous growth is cancer
1–10 of 133 posts
Re: Continuous growth is cancer
#2[flagged]
Re: Continuous growth is cancer
#3I find it hard not to fully agree with this article. Even without questioning the capitalist obsession for infinite growth (despite finite resources and markets), we should not have had the practice of hiring more than is essential to run the business. Who thought it was a good idea to make a success metric out of headcount?
To comment on the writing: that title is genius.
Re: Continuous growth is cancer
#4[flagged]
> First, the war has had very little appreciable effect on the stock market. This is personal politics injection. Your average westerner would probably go on living their life with a steady 7% return if the news media didn't constantly shove the war going on down our throats.
This war is actually important both geopolitically and economically. Ukraine is a major food producer and the even the smallest changes in global food supply is felt at all corners of the world. Additionally, it’s result, and specifically how far the US will involve itself, is going to set the stage for how China proceeds with Taiwan. Pretending that its impacts are irrelevant or insignificant to the western world, both immediate and long term, is very misinformed.
Re: Continuous growth is cancer
#5My thoughts too.
Re: Continuous growth is cancer
#6“Growth” at the individual level has become a euphemism
It really means extrinsic motivation. It means being willing to play the game to hit whatever milestones are laid out for you. To push yourself for those milestones to reach a reward.
Not because those goals are intrinsically rewarding - but because you want to demonstrate what you need for promotion or raise. If the goals were intrinsically rewarding, we would need to internalize them and fully believe in them. And I don’t think that’s possible - or not even desirable - for many jobs.
Because after all 90% of goals are given to you, not co-created with you. Even when managers feel like there’s co-creation happening they don’t see how heavily they mold that process, how the power dynamic leads to the employee trying to guess what the manager actually wants, then adjust their goals to please the manager for the next career milestone.
See Googles graveyard of failed products - all to hit the next promotion - abandoned when people check that box, lose interest, and move on. Google thinks it’s a sign of growth mindset. In reality it’s a case of employees seeing a behavior-“shipping new products”- being rewarded.
Re: Continuous growth is cancer
#7I'd challenge the idea that this is unsustainable because of the specific system. Entropy and resource limits mean whatever we do is unsustainable under any system as far as we tell, both theoretically and in practical timespans. Nobody seems to have an argument for where the physical resources will come from, or how we deal with exponential population growth without just having regular famines (even worse than losing a job!).
Life looks a lot like cancer. Cancer looks a lot like life. "Being cancer" isn't a bad thing, cancer is only bad when it is a disease in humans. Otherwise it is the way of the world. We are surrounded by patterns that propagate themselves quickly.
Also; the people who are anti-growth have a much, much worse track record in every way than the alternatives.
Re: Continuous growth is cancer
#8> starting to feel that the system is incredibly flawed
It is! To this day the vast profits in tech are generated by (c)opywrong laws, which make no sense, and are downright evil—because poor kids get access to crap information even though we have the technology to get humanity's best information to everyone. There are some people that have exploited these bad laws, like BG (see his 1976 letter^1) and have made vast fortunes. For a moment it looked like Google would be different, but then no, they too opted for profits over doing the right thing, and the web is getting worse.
No one is connecting the dots, or rather—people in tech and the media industries can connect the dots but mentally don't want to face the truth: the vast profits are from dishonest laws, not from some magic value creation.
We need to get rid of these bad laws and make money the honest way.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Open_Letter_to_Hobbyists
Re: Continuous growth is cancer
#9“Growth” at the individual level has become a euphemism It really means extrinsic motivation. It means being willing to play the game to hit whatever milestones are laid out for you. To push yourself for those milestones to reach a reward. Not because those goals are intrinsically rewarding - but because you want to demonstrate what you need for promotion or raise. If the goals were intrinsically rewarding, we would…
In my experience, the "goals" you hit are really capabilities. Can you design bigger systems? Can you lead bigger teams? Can you define winning strategy?
Those aren't artificial milestones, they are real things (eg, you'd need them if you ran your own company) and growing from someone who "can't" to someone who "can" is exhilarating.
Re: Continuous growth is cancer
#10Productivity is the only way wealth is created. From 99% employed farming to 1% employed farming, but using technology to make this possible. This is why we have wealth - we can all get more of our needs fulfilled, because fulfilling those needs requires less inputs (labor, time, physical elements).
This is such a fundamental and all-encompassing truth it is sad more people never grasp it.
Capitalism is but one way to organize people to improve technology (in the abstract, not the Silicon Valley meaning). Capitalism harnesses a very powerful component of human nature - one’s primary desire towards one’s own needs and pleasure - and uses that to drive technological progress.
I have yet to see any other type of human organization that is more effective than this system for driving technological progress (and thus human flourishing).