America's Growth Addiction

Paper Belt and Silicon Road - Part 1

Imagine a divided America. Imagine an America divided not along party lines, but between an overengineered bureaucracy and a swashbuckling counter-establishment. 

For me, the America we live in already feels that way. I’m not alone — It feels that way for countless startup founders, engineers, and independent journalists. AI is being built in a uniquely American culture: the culture of optimism, experimentation, and meritocracy that draws talented young people across the world. This is the culture of the Silicon Road. 

After moving to Washington, DC, I see the opposite side of the story. Here, a different kind of ambition reigns — a transparent, neurotic panopticon where process and optics are the ultimate trump card. This is the Paper Belt, the people in charge of regulating AI.

The Road and Belt have something important in common: they have a growth addiction. In the Paper Belt, you win by having the biggest coalition. Every new ‘player’ you bring in adds more weight to your side. The Belt hungrily eyes elected offices, civil service, media, and legacy industries. All are welcome, as long as you play by their house rules. 

Meanwhile, the Silicon Road must grow to scale companies. Every startup needs growth in talent to staff its teams and growth in capital to pay them. To experience the full tech company life cycle, like Google or Amazon, you need to onboard hundreds of thousands of employees and billions of dollars. In many ways, the Road’s growth addiction is more severe and more terminal. Most Westerners live in between these two systems. Their lives are affected by both cultures, but not dominated by either. That’s changing.  

The Paper Belt is a pressure cooker. It’s main ingredient is the will to power, manifested in the desire to rule and make law. The will to power is not limited to those seeking direct political office, but encompasses industry incumbents trying to use political power to gain an economic edge over competitors. As organizations scale and mature, they become able and willing to use political power, becoming part of the Belt. Economist Robin Hanson describes this transformation as a form of rot: “Software changes resulting from new features and changing hardware and customer environments tend to be haphazard, resulting in more interdependencies … Over time, legal systems seem to similarly become more complex, interdependent, and resistant to change.” Conquest’s laws of large institutions takes over: “The behavior of any bureaucratic organization can best be understood by assuming that it is controlled by a secret cabal of its enemies.”