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 weâve got two generations of institutional experts that are corrupted, and that we cannot wake up from this crazy fever dream that weâre all in, because we canât 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 isnât badly compromised are people with an independent source of sustenance â 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
Large institutions built on implicit growth expectations don't die when growth runs out. They simply become pathological in steady state.
2019
2020
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.
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.
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 donât even have to tell me which one. Itâs a coming time-bomb.
This is E.G.O.s.
People ask why Iâm on about masks. Iâm not focused on them. Iâve 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 theyâre willing to kill, and without blinking.
2008 was about the theory of E.G.O.s. And it looked like this. Sooner or later weâll 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.
But maybe this is getting boring. I mean, itâs just our governmental & world organization leaders pushing us in front of a train to cover for their failures so that their careers arenât interrupted with so much as a hiccup. So same old, same old.
Frankly, I want off the Titanic.
There is some rule that leaders never pay w/ their careers or their freedom. That didnât 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.
So no, itâs not about masks. Itâs not about forest fire management. Itâs not about central bank tampering. Itâs not about campaign finance. Itâs not about H1B. Itâs not about String Theory or a reproducibility crisis.
Itâs about their parent theory: Embedded-Growth-Obligations.
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. Thatâs their superpower.đ
2021
Related Pages
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 (5:18â9:13)
- Rubin Report: Jun 29, 2018 (27:47â31:57)
- 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