The Obsession With More Never Ends Well

Sadly, it also never ends.

a man sits on top of a pile of money, unsure as to what to do next, unable to climb down, digital art — by DALL·E

I remember reading about how the 1995 economic crash in Japan surprised most people. House prices had been increasing for decades, and many had made much money. The population had accepted that growth was inherent to the model and wouldn’t stop because it had thus been designed. The aftermath of the 2008 recession was also entertaining: the media reported on the death of a model, and the internet was overflowing with articles about the imminent overhaul of a system that would soon be unrecognisable. The end of an era came again; as usual, it left the stage subtly and mostly ignored because everybody was too enraptured arguing about who was to blame.

At an infinitely more banal level, I am now informed that streaming services are about to change forever, not by some breakthrough in the entertainment industry they upended but by reverting to the old TV model of weekly releases and content interrupted by adverts. While this is another end of another era that I will choose not to believe until the evidence proves me wrong, it does point at a the same flaw that has broken so many economies before: the obsession with growth.

Major streaming services cancel some genuinely scintillating shows after one or two seasons because they have failed to bring as many new users as they were designed…