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“love doesn’t scale”

Mark Hurst:

Love doesn’t scale.

The phrase appears in Marc’s argument about why markets are so important. Getting rich with markets, he says, is better than the alternative of starting a war. The only other option would be doing something for love, but why would anyone do that? Love doesn’t scale. …

For the rest of us – who haven’t made a career investing in unethical growth-at-any-cost companies – the phrase might hit differently.

Love doesn’t scale.

Deepening a relationship. Visiting a sick friend. Serving at a soup kitchen. Andreessen’s “techno-optimist” mindset is confounded by acts of love. They don’t make money, they don’t supercharge a market, and perhaps most heretically, they’re typically low-tech or even involve no technology at all. What is a techno-optimist supposed to do with this “love” idea, this thing that keeps people out of markets and off the internet? It literally doesn’t compute.

As I said of anti-inflation:

It may seem strange to think that the antidote to continuous shopping is a love of things, but, properly understood, it seems exactly right to me. To love and care for things rather than replace them or bury them behind the new and the more. Berry’s solution in the Menifesto mentioned above was simply this: “everyday do something/ that won’t compute.” And the first thing he lists is love. Nothing in this world is more resistant to computation than love. And if it won’t compute, it won’t inflate.