Technology

At a certain point, profit can turn to status, like with the super wealthy. Elon Musk seems to be pushing for $1T, not because the extra money matters, but because he wants the status of being the first to get there.

But if you look at the quiet majority, many people will take more stressful roles because of the higher earning potential. So they're increasing their output specifically to get a better standard of living. Those types tend to be contractors, small business owners, and early stage startup employees.

If you look at the alternative, such as China or the USSR, those who rise to the top aren't those with the highest productivity, but those most able to play the political game. If you look at a small engineering company, it's generally those with the most technical capability who rise through the ranks, but once you get to larger companies, higher roles generally get taken over by business types, i.e. those best able to play the business side of the political game. It's the same process, just with different mechanisms for gaining power.

Any proper solution here needs to fix the problem of the wrong people getting to positions of power. The economic system isn't particularly relevant, other than setting the rules of the game. The best solution, IMO, is to make the rules of the game such that you get punished hard if you don't know what you're doing (i.e. you're a business type running an engineering firm firing top talent to cut quarterly costs), and you get rewarded if you do. If we actually put execs in jail for problems their businesses create, I think we'd quickly see companies like Boeing change their leadership to one that will prevent problems, such as someone w/ an engineering or safety background.

That's why I think government and the economy should be as separate as possible, and in fact in an adversarial relationship. Bureaucrats should be rewarded for catching crime in the private sector, and private companies should have real incentives to keep everything above board. That can't happen when politicians are literally funded by the companies they're supposed to be regulating.