I hold a conspiracy theory the global economy died five years ago during Covid. It’s been on life support through stimulus checks and flash tech hype cycles ever since trying to keep the dormant heart beating. You sense it too. There’s no beating heart. There’s no thumping energy. No vein of excitement. Tech and knowledge work seems to be suffering the most.

The death of the Economy started long before Covid if I’m honest. Since the iPhone it feels like everyone has been waiting for the next big hit, the next new shiny, the next money-maker. It’s like an endless distracted boyfriend meme looping year over year. And I regret to inform you that the investors are at it again. Today it’s LLMs, before that crypto and the Web3 Metaverse, before that VR, before that the gig economy, before that smartwatches, before that smart-homes, before that 3D televisions, before that…

The phalanx of tech billionaires behind Trump at the inauguration is an image seared into my memory and it’s taught me a lot. It taught me that these companies are desperate. Desperate to win favor. Desperate to avoid regulation. Desperate to keep their government contracts. Because without the preferential treatment, the lawlessness, and the humongous contracts, they’re financially and morally bankrupt.

(To be fair –why do I feel the need to be fair to tech billionaires!?– from a Friedman doctrine perspective their job is to create value for stakeholders. Kissing the ring of the petty, easily-aggrieved, fascist, man-baby tyrant is probably the most surefire way to avoid unwanted scrutiny in uncertain fiscal times. I understand that part of their job. But I’d wager the long-term outcome will be that they set themselves up for future embarrassment, exploitation, and extortion while simultaneously selling out all the immigrants, queer people, and furries who keep their empires running on a daily basis.)

That scene in the rotunda reinforced my belief the economy was already dead. If Big Tech is clinging to government contracts and quid pro quo perks, then we must be out of ideas. Every time the winds of fortune change, everyone points their boats in the same direction. In a healthy, living economy shouldn’t there be more than one lake to fish in? Instead of asking “What doesn’t exist and would be useful?” and investing in that, it’s about “How can I extract the most money from hot new tech?” Instead of “What’s quality?” and chasing that, it’s “How can we move fast and make breakable things?”

An aside: What if there are no new ideas? What if the internet accelerated knowledge sharing to the point we’ve made all the software and we’re literally out of ideas!? There are no more worlds left to conquer, Alexander! Help!

I doubt that though. I bet there’s good ideas out there. I bet they’re not on Mars. I bet they’re inside people you already know. Impractical ideas that don’t scale well to billions of users but could have an incredible impact on a local economy and community (RIP Gowalla). Ideas that solve actual problems and create actual utility or connection. Small-scale ideas that when combined can breathe new life into a dead economy.

The definition of a healthy economy is actually one problem I had with the Biden administration. Liberals do a terrible job communicating economic accomplishments even though they outperform Conservative administrations by a large margin. When they do communicate it’s always in lagging indicators like GDP, the stock market, non-farm jobs, consumer price indexes, or low-unemployment numbers. Those are all well and good, but to me it all comes down to a single question: If I lost or quit my job today how easy would it be to find another similar job? To me economic mobility is the true sign of a healthy economy, the ability to have options. To be free.

I’m trying to stay optimistic, but the realist in me knows it’ll be some time until the economy comes back again. At a minimum, we’ll have to restart investments in science. Especially weird science. Even more weird than what you’re thinking right now. I’m talking super weird. And then that weird science takes 20 years to become practical applications. Through that public good is how we get the foundations like the Internet, WiFi, and GPS that have built the society we know and are dependent on today. It’s how we build the pipeline for tomorrow’s economy. But those innovations are on a decades timescale and –math-wise– I’m not sure I have that in me.