Today's signal looks at this piece from Centre for Postnormal Policy and Futures Studies on how Freedom is decoupling from (nominal) economic growth - much the same way labour productivity (personal growth) has infamously decoupled from (again, nominal) capital productivity (and is dividing eve further and faster than ever now thanks to software and AI "eating" all our "bullshit" jobs).
These are deviating schisms - good things used to go together, greater social and economic freedom was associated with greater social and economic prosperity. Greater education and up-skilling was associated with greater individual and societal wealth. Win-win! But when one side of the equation loses as the other gains, and we devolve into zero-sum, winner takes all battles, the "growth" that is left is ugly and deformed, like cancer cells rather than flourishing (proverbial) forests (I may or may not have been reading Richard Powers's The Overstory lately).
Growth is good! Parasites and monoculture, not so much.
Anyway - how can we reconcile that oil-rich autocratic territories getting "richer" even as human rights and freedoms are not gaining pace at the same speed? Or that there are more billionaires than ever even as freedom of speech is under threat?
Don't you hate it when good things happen to bad guys?
Ouch.
I guess all we can do is ask again : what are we measuring and maximising and making things for? And at what cost?
Let me know.
Read more:
The freedom deficit : https://atlas.postnormaltim.es/dominant-trends/freedom-deficit
When good things go together :
“Growth” :
It’s all connected : https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/mar/23/the-overstory-by-richard-powers-review
Decoupling - when good things don't quite go together anymore