George McKee
Aug 8, 2017 · 1 min read

I’m trying hard to maintain my amusement at the way that economists try to model growth without really understanding just what it is that is growing. Value does not simply consist of a quantity of transactions involving money; it’s really about a rich and satisfying lifestyle. People who control large amounts of money or power are often victims of a mental disorder that makes them unhappy to have anyone exist who has more than they do. Until economists and psychologists devise a way to unwind the “hedonic treadmill”, all broad-based discussions of growth will inevitably devolve into despair and disappointment.

One way out of this bind is to work on separating material posessions from high-quality experiences. For most of history, these were fundamentally tied together, but with the development of information technology, they can start separating. Only a few thousands or tens of thousands of people can attend a given music or theater performance or sports event in person, and the view from the nosebleed seats in the third balcony isn’t that great, but with high fidelity/high definition audio visual systems, millions can participate from the front row. On a small scale, the best teleconferencing systems are very nearly as good as being there in person, and they’ve been that good for 10 years now. These systems make possible global collaborations that previously required hundreds of thousands of kilowatt hours of carbon-burning jet travel, but now need only a thousand or so kWh of clean energy to power a few computers, displays, and network routers.

George McKee

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Working on projects in cyber security strategy, finance, and computational neurophilosophy. Formerly worked at HP Inc. Twitter:@GMcKCypress