Venkatesh Rao

When big solutionist energy sources decline, cultural producers often try to tap into problemist energies instead — the energy fields around institutions built around big problems. This is almost always a mistake. You don’t get energized by such fields, you get captured by them.

The thing is, solutionist energy fields, like the one around Moore’s Law, feed you an abundance surplus. They don’t have an agenda for you because you’re too unimportant. So it’s free energy. You don’t have to toe the party line (of course there’s one) unless you actually buy it.

But Problemist energy fields... they have plans for you. They traffic in scarcity games around problems that need to be kept alive and managed to perpetuate the institutions. Cultural producers are more important in this scheme of things and their freedoms are reined in more.

To the extent there’s a literary-industrial complex (or cultural-industrial complex) around SV, it’s pretty laissez-faire. Any problems with your work, any cringe earnestness or hustleporn quality, is your own problem. Not the result of a party line.

By contrast Solutionist energy fields (like say the old economy one centered in New York)... boy do they come with strings attached. There are enforcers and gatekeepers and tastemakers and such at every bloody turn. This energy will destroy your soul if you draw on it too long.

Fall in line and produce by their recipes, they’ll love you. Violate any of a thousand subtle production norms, and they’ll turn on you. If you’re incompetent they’ll simply ignore you. If you violate their tastes but draw attention they claim, they will try to cut you down. Etc.

So in the absence of big solutionist energy fields, I strongly recommend you wander off into the desert on your own, without whatever energy source you can strap onto your back. If you accept problemist energy bargains you’ll likely regret it.

Energy in this sense is some mix of inspiration, energizing ideological commitments etc. But money is a pretty good proxy for it. If you’re a cultural producer, your money source is a pretty good proxy for your energy. So be careful and discerning in whose money you take.