Blog Post

AEIdeas

In a recent podcast chat with me, economist Tyler Cowen spoke about his new book, “The Complacent Class,” which posits America as a stagnant society. Not moving to take a new job. Not starting businesses. Not taking risks. Cowen: “Life is safer, more convenient and more comfortable – no one wants to say those are bad things. But, at the margin, if you don’t take enough risk, there does come a time where you start moving backwards, can’t pay the bills, or have decent governance. So over the longer run it’s a bad thing.”

Indeed, perpetual discontent is at the heart of innovative modern capitalism. Good enough never is, at least not for too long. What’s the latest? Perhaps this idea is best summed up by technology writer Kevin Kelly (another podcast guest of mine) in his latest book, “The Inevitable.” Kelly writes:

If we are honest, we must admit that one aspect of the ceaseless upgrades and eternal becoming of the Technium is to make holes in our heart. One day, not too long ago, we (all of us) decided we cannot live another day unless we have a smart phone; a dozen years earlier this need would have dumbfounded us. Now we get angry if the network is slow. But before, when we were innocent, we had no thoughts of the network at all. We keep inventing new things that make new longings, new holes that must be filled. Some people are furious that our hearts are pierced this way by the things we make. They see this ever-neediness as a debasement, a lowering of human nobility, the source of our continual discontentment. I agree that technology is the source. The momentum of technologies pushes us to chase the newest, which are always disappearing beneath the advent of the next newer thing so satisfaction continues to recede from our grasp. But I celebrate the never-ending discontentment that technology brings. We are different from animal ancestors in that we are not content to merely survive, but have been incredibly busy making up new itches that we have to scratch, creating new desires we’ve never had before. This discontent is the trigger for ingenuity and growth.

Of course Kelly is hardly the first to recognize the restlessness of Americans, and how important it is to who were as Americans. Tocqueville had a fair bit to say about restlessness, as well.