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Agricultural surpluses have been spent on military parades, crown jewels, tall cathedrals, vast priesthoods, gigantic tombs, arrays of monoliths, treasure fleets, moon shots, & a dizzying variety of other things. /2
These seem like irrational bubbles, yet in many cases persisted for or recurred across centuries or millennia. We moderns seem to be trending towards competitions for scholastic credentials & efforts at longer & healthier lives, each of which appeal to insatiable needs. /3
Almost any way developed countries spend our titanic industrial surpluses will be epic frivolity by historical standards, whether it be sprawling regulatory & scholastic priesthoods or a “service economy” where mobile servants wait on the tables of secular priests & investors. /4
There are no solid standards of historical precedent or economic rationality that can help us much in predicting which forms of frivolity will dominate, rather they point to the optionality & unpredictability among a vast universe of choices. /5
Would you say this change is a good thing or bad thing? Or are we justified in judging this new trend?
It's an extremely nice & historically unprecedented thing to have such astronomical luxury of choices, but it (along with other unique aspects of modern society, such as large social scales) also make for many novel problems we can't even begin to know how to address.
You state that these bubbles only seem irrational. Do you share the view that certain financial bubbles can be important catalysts for economic, technological, and social change?
Contrary to the economic mainstream view, I think that we need to distinguish between unproductive and destructive bubbles–such as the central-bank-fueled global bubble in everything–and innovation-accelerating bubbles, such as the one that bootstrapped bitcoin into existence.
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