Embedded Growth Obligations

Embedded Growth Obligations (EGOs) are structures built into institutions in times of growth that assume growth will continue. An institution must therefore grow to meet its EGOs, or its leaders must lie about the presence of growth. This compromising of incentives causes institutions to tend towards exploitative or sociopathic behaviors, as their leaders face selective pressures to maintain the status quo. Eric Weinstein first publicly introduced the idea in his first appearance on The Rubin Report on January 6, 2017.

History

Embedded Growth Obligations became prevalent during the stable, broadly distributed, technologically-led economic growth following World War II.

Physicist and historian of science Derek de Solla Price first mapped embedded growth obligations in his 1961 book Science Since Babylon, where he noticed that science was on an exponential trajectory that could not reasonably be sustained.

Examples

• Pension plans
• Social security
• Corporate ladders
• Student loans for higher education

Child Theories

Eric Weinstein contends that the embedded growth obligations are generative (parents) of major problems in modern society, and that these are a specific instantiation of institutional derangement due to embedded growth obligations.

• H1B Visas as a mechanism to suppress STEM wages
• Manipulation of Consumer Price Index
• Student debt crisis
• Mask and PPE shortages in the Coronavirus pandemic as a result of institutional failures
• String Theory as a dead-end in physics
• The reproducibility crisis in the social sciences
• Campaign finance corruption and unfairness

Further Discussion

Embedded Growth Obligations are the way in which institutions plan their future predicated on legacies of growth. And since the period between the end of World War II in 1945 and the early 70s had such an unusually beautiful growth regime, many of our institutions became predicated upon low-variance technology-led, stable, broadly distributed growth. Now, this is a world we have not seen in an organic way since the early 1970s, and yet, because it was embedded in our institutions, what we have is a world in which the expectation is still present in the form of an embedded growth obligation. That is, the pension plans, the corporate ladders, are all still built very much around a world that has long since vanished.

We have effectively become a Growth Cargo Cult. That is, once upon a time, planes used to land in the Pacific, let's say, during World War II, and Indigenous people looked at the air strips and the behavior of the air traffic controllers, and they've been mimicking those behaviors in the years since as ritual, but the planes no longer land. Well, in large measure, our institutions are built for a world in which growth doesn't happen in the same way anymore.

-Eric Weinstein on The Portal #18 @ 13 min

"We have effectively entered a period in which we cannot trust our experts. I think that what began as a desire to contribute and to do real work, ended with an understanding that we’ve got two generations of institutional experts that are corrupted, and that we cannot wake up from this crazy fever dream that we’re all in, because we can’t figure out who we can still trust.

The doctors are compromised. The professors are compromised. The Journalists are compromised. The politicians are compromised.

About the only thing that isn’t badly compromised are people with an independent source of sustenance — individuals and very small groups are about the only thing that is free of this disease of the Embedded Growth Obligation (EGO)."

-Eric Weinstein

On X

2016

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

Large institutions built on implicit growth expectations don't die when growth runs out. They simply become pathological in steady state.

12:39 AM · Sep 20, 2016

2018

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

The @washingtonpost begins to try to wrestle w/ what may be my most dangerous social idea: institutional Embedded Growth Obligations or EGOs, and the nearly 50Yr corruption & destruction of the institutional expert class.

Enjoy: “Up or Out Goes Sideways.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2018/07/19/up-or-out-goes-sideways/

12:42 AM · Jul 20, 2018

2019

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

I’ve been talking about unmeetable “Embedded Growth Obligations” or E.G.O.s as the reason why all our expert communities are under unbearable pressure to distort across our institutions. The physics community is *very* trustworthy on the experiment-theory level. Yet even here:

5:00 PM · Feb 2, 2019

Sabine Hossenfelder

@skdh

Particle physicists surprised to find I am not their cheer-leader

https://backreaction.blogspot.com/2019/02/particle-physicists-surprised-to-find-i.html?spref=tw

6:23 AM · Feb 1, 2019

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

This allows us to use Fundamental Physics as a reference for deception.

These folks are our BEST. They aren’t lying about their experiments. They aren’t lying about agreement w theory. They aren’t wrong about expecting another accelerator imho.

Yet the EGOs make even them fib.

5:00 PM · Feb 2, 2019

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

I may disagree with @skdh on whether we should build another multi-billion dollar accelerator. But she is exactly correct that there is no longer any new physics beyond the Standard Model expected to be found. She is telling truths above her pay-grade in the eyes of our leaders.

5:00 PM · Feb 2, 2019

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

This is why we need to rescue our experts & institutions. We need to stop asking them to lie to us about their needs for growth. If even high energy physics can’t escape its inability to meet growth expectations, then all expert communities are suspect.

These are our very best.

5:00 PM · Feb 2, 2019

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

“This economy is making liars of us all.”

My model of the universal corruption of our institutional experts via “Embedded Growth Obligations” (or E.G.O.s) is finally getting a political hearing. This, after decades of being ignored.

Thanks to Andrew Yang for taking a risk. 🙏

4:23 PM · Mar 13, 2019

Andrew Yang

@AndrewYang

The growth model is breaking down in many industries - but we pretend that it is still going. It is corrupting many of us and many of our institutions.

12:45 AM · Mar 13, 2019

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

We have fused a convent with a bordello and now we can’t separate them. The bordello needs a convent for respectability. The convent needs a bordello for resources. These houses divided will not stand until we refactor our institutions.

The problem is us. This is who we became.

2:57 AM · Sep 13, 2019

GBH News

@GBHNews

COMMENTARY | Two prominent local colleges are grappling with a straightforward ethical question that has been made out to be needlessly complex: Should a university return donations of “dirty money”?

https://web.archive.org/web/20190904160345/https://www.wgbh.org/news/commentary/2019/08/29/harvard-mit-and-epsteins-dirty-money

12:29 AM · Sep 8, 2019

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

The modern US research university is built on the steepest E.G.O. (embedded growth obligation) of any major sector. It’s a pyramid scheme careening out of control with Boomers at the helm of all of the top ones as they have been hooked up for inter-generational wealth transfer.

2:57 AM · Sep 13, 2019

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

It’s time for the failed generations (Boomers & Silents) to leave and the untested (GenXers & Millenials) to get to work cleaning up this unholy mess after a pair of failed generations.

The Epstein cover up is the Hill that our Institutional class wishes to die on?

Ok. #SoBeIt

2:57 AM · Sep 13, 2019

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

This is going to keep happening. Plot any metric you like. They all tell a single story:

3:02 AM · Sep 13, 2019

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

Should @SamHarrisOrg & I talk about the Boomers and their original & bold approach to stewardship of education, research and our world class universities?

How about how Student Debt was reclassified in 2005 to keep kids from fleeing this experimental approach through bankruptcy?

8:12 PM · Feb 26, 2019

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

I don’t actually like saying this, but there is no way out. The United States research enterprise cannot afford this generational effect turning our research enterprise into a giant wealth transfer program. This generation has to lose ill gotten gains:

3:09 AM · Sep 13, 2019

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

As we know, University costs have skyrocketed above inflation. Administrator ranks have ballooned. Student Debt has become non-dischargeable. Adjunct & Student labor have exploded. ETC.

Turns out, there's really only one generation at the helm now steering us into this iceberg:

9:25 PM · Mar 4, 2019

2020

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

So far as I know have never seen this phenomena before.

Only one generation is stewarding our collective future. *Every* research university has loaded up mountains of student debt, armies of unwanted administrators, foreign STEM workers, and soaring tuition costs.

Every one.

11:35 PM · Jan 25, 2020

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

As recently as the 1980s, the median age of a university President was 51 I believe or thereabouts. That would be *more* than half of them Millenial and GenX.

We have simply never experimented with one generation as dominant and as unconcerned for the collective future before.

11:35 PM · Jan 25, 2020

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

Any attempt to question their stewardship results in allegations of agism, xenophobia, elitism and sour grapes.

But look at the graphs of any research university. They all tell the same story. You don’t even have to tell me which one. It’s a coming time-bomb.

This is E.G.O.s.

11:39 PM · Jan 25, 2020

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

People ask why I’m on about masks. I’m not focused on them. I’ve been trying to tell you about my theory of Embedded Growth Obligations and how our *entire* civilian lead leadership has become deranged by them.

Masks just show us they‘re willing to kill, and without blinking.

4:26 PM · Mar 31, 2020

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

2008 was about the theory of E.G.O.s. And it looked like this. Sooner or later we‘ll get to serious armed conflict w/ developed nations if we want to sit & wait for that.

I guess I have a vague hope that we will wake up earlier when we see Doctors & Nurses in Queens put at risk.

4:26 PM · Mar 31, 2020

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

But maybe this is getting boring. I mean, it’s just our governmental & world organization leaders pushing us in front of a train to cover for their failures so that their careers aren’t interrupted with so much as a hiccup. So same old, same old.

Frankly, I want off the Titanic.

4:26 PM · Mar 31, 2020

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

There is some rule that leaders never pay w/ their careers or their freedom. That didn’t use to be true. We used to jail people, clawback their gains, and promote based on vigor/ability. And we will again. We just have to flush two generations of leaders that changed our rules.

4:26 PM · Mar 31, 2020

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

So no, it’s not about masks. It’s not about forest fire management. It’s not about central bank tampering. It’s not about campaign finance. It’s not about H1B. It’s not about String Theory or a reproducibility crisis.

It’s about their parent theory: Embedded-Growth-Obligations.

4:26 PM · Mar 31, 2020

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

The simple through line is this: your leadership was selected for based on an ability not to upset their own and other institutions while those institutions had to lie about their success & inability to grow.

This leadership cohort is generation ponzi. That’s their superpower.🙏

4:26 PM · Mar 31, 2020

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

“What happened in 1971-1973?” maybe the most underrated question of our time.

There are roughly two schools. The larger more prestigious school thinks it was about economics.

The smaller school thinks the economics were downstream of science and Embedded Growth Obligations.

4:02 PM · May 6, 2020

Michael P Gibson

@William_Blake

WTF Happened In 1971?

Very much understudied era in history. The fork in the road, when stagnation began to spread. https://wtfhappenedin1971.com

8:22 PM · May 5, 2020

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

The larger school has the gold standard/Breton Woods, female entrants into the labor pool, Arab oil embargo, Watergate etc... on its side. If you want somewhere to start, start there.

My school simply says that it was destined to blow up & we just chose the path. A very bad one.

4:02 PM · May 6, 2020

Horus Virahanka

@HorusVirahanka

Just Mikovits makes a compelling case against Bayh-Dole act accelerating the problem in 1980.

4:06 PM · May 6, 2020

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

Eilberg act in 1976 was first. Then Bayh-Dole undermined the Vannavar Bush endless frontier arrangment.

4:07 PM · May 6, 2020

2021

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

Embedded growth obligations= EGOs.

That is the single great story of our time. It explains almost everything after 1971-3 but assumes almost nothing:

A) Every institution is built with an EGO.

B) Every institution that can’t meet its EGO becomes pathological.

C) Lower growth.

7:14 PM · Jan 2, 2021

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

E.G.O.s = Embedded Growth Obligations.

The simple theory of universal institutional collapse in a society built around assumptions of growth.

Picture a skyline of Transamerica Buildings and think of all our institutions as pyramids of some kind w/ different slopes.

#Bitcoin

9:19 PM · Mar 13, 2021

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

There is one giant pyramid scheme. It just has high multiplicity and different slopes.

Medicine looks like Education looks like Law looks like Finance. Etc.

Journalism is just one example. Step back.

Stop looking at the individual trees when it’s the forest blazing red.

9:23 PM · Mar 13, 2021

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

Feeling very fortunate to have @JakeOrthwein do this amazing video presentation of Kayfabe as part of a three part video “write-up” of the idea that Embedded Growth Obligations (or EGOs) plunged an industrialized🌍 into Kayfabrication according to a Gated Institutional Narrative.

9:21 PM · May 10, 2021

2023

Eric Weinstein

@EricRWeinstein

@Seggitorial @martinmbauer Maybe you didn’t get the point of Embedded Growth Obligations. It’s a single point of failure problem. It’s not a million different problems.

5:33 PM · Feb 2, 2023

Related Pages

• Boskin Commission
• CPI
• The Distributed Idea Suppression Complex (The DISC)
• Gated Institutional Narrative (GIN)
• Horse-and-Rider Problem
• Immigration
• Jessupization
• Kayfabe
• Kayfabrication
• Labor Shortages
• Managed Reality TM
• Peer Injunction
• Peer Review
• Quantum Gravity
• String Theory

Links

Eventually, this page should be a fuller explanation of EGO, but for the time being here are a few links to things we were able to find doing a Google Search.

• Rebel Wisdom: Glitch in the Matrix II (5:18–9:13)
• Rubin Report: Jun 29, 2018 (27:47–31:57)
• Why We Can No Longer Trust Our Experts
• Eric Weinstein Intellectual Dark Web
• Child Theories
• The Portal: Eric Weinstein on Embedded Growth Obligations
• Peter Thiel and Eric Weinstein: Why Universities Have Failed