An odd case of Balaji going Marxist. I can’t really reconcile the fact that I agree with the premise but disagree with the conclusion. If value comes from humans crystallizing our time into objects (very much in line with Marx), and technologies are tools to improve the rate at which we transform time into value, then it follows that all resources are ultimately denominated in time we spend creating them, and that more time means more value. If that’s the case, and time is the ultimate source of value, “creating more time,” or lengthening lives, is surely the ultimate purpose of technology… and yet, I don’t agree that the purpose of technology is immortality. In part, because I think the value of life comes from the fact that it’s finite, and that experiences are almost by definition not repeatable, special in their uniqueness. The logic is sound, but something is off.
A more philosophical viewpoint on the topic discussed in Fred Wilson’s piece on the profit motive I shared above. Here, Crawford argues that we should think about companies and organizations as living organisms, and to consider the feedback loops that keep them running - their metabolic processes. The fact that profits are a simple feedback loop we can exploit doesn’t mean that everything should be for profit, but as he points out, money aligns interests and keeps people honest.