Hacking Capitalism With Nature

Through bio-fabrication and synthetic biology, we can heal our planet while increasing economic vitality

For too long, the advance of human civilization has been based in extraction. Our fuel, materials, food, basically everything we need has required digging, burning, and polluting.

The industrial revolution brought humanity to a new epoch of growth and opportunity, but with severe ecological consequences that we’ll be paying for over the foreseeable future. Coal, oil, steel — for all the benefits and progress these technologies have enabled, they are inherently unsustainable.

The digital revolution allowed the explosive economic growth of the industrial era to carry on, making our processes more efficient by orders of magnitude. Now, we seem to be reaching the end of the digital S curve. But seemingly just in time, biology is offering another growth opportunity, not just to expand the economy, but to also bring it back into alignment with the planet.

As the biotech industry gears up for its own S curve, we’re seeing the emergence of the sorts of companies capitalism loves: low replication cost, super high productivity. Biotech seems poised to repeat the arc of progress that we’ve seen before, but with a fundamental difference: it will be good for the planet. Where the computer revolution created tremendous productivity gains in information space, biofabrication and synthetic biology will bring a comparable transformation to the physical world, powered by the regenerative processes of nature. It isn’t just hype — even the US government itself is recognizing and supporting the key role biotechnology will play in making manufacturing more resilient and sustainable over the coming years.

As more companies start to make things with biology, we will see products and processes brought to scale that aren’t extractive, but reciprocal with the environment. It is important to move forward with this goal in mind, and not to greenwash a technology — if a biomaterial is infused with plastic, for example, it will still belong in the landfill. Biotech, when done correctly, doesn’t require extractive inputs, and outputs don’t go into the landfill, but instead become nutrients for the wider ecosystem. See a company like Solugen for an example of how everyday needs can be met at scale through innovative enzymes that produce needed chemicals efficiently, without harmful emissions, and, crucially, at lower cost.

The key is that, by growing in accordance with principles of reciprocity instead of extraction, of partnership with nature rather than exploitation and extraction of it, capitalism can ‘jump the rails’ to models that actually accord with the needs of Spaceship Earth. The combination of drastically powerful new technology that meets fundamental human needs at lower costs and better performance is the kind of thing capitalism loves. In this way, biology provides a unique toolkit to “hack” capitalism, by scaling systems that are non-extractive and even regenerative, so that they simply become the best available option.

But there is even more that our leap to biological technology might do for us in an economic sense. In the current moment we are seeing a variety of systemic shocks that are driving inflation globally. These include global tensions, soaring energy, food, and material costs, and fiscal policy in both rates and stimulus. Historically, technology can be thought of as a hedge against inflation, and one of the most powerful we have for managing inflationary threats in the “Physical Goods” domain, such as food, materials, and energy.

Television sets, computers, phones, and so on miniaturized and became cheaper thanks to advances in silicon technology, which is essentially a two-dimensional landscape of innovation defined by converting information into electrons and moving them around in ever more efficient combinations. Even within its limits, the productivity gains and GDP growth of digital companies over the last 15 years have been remarkable. Just look at AppleAAPL
, MicrosoftMSFT
, Facebook, Google, NVIDIANVDA
DIA
, today account for 22% of total SP 500.

Biotech represents a three-dimensional landscape for innovation, touching almost all of the physical world, with the ability to grow complete structures, produce novel compounds, or perform ecosystem services. The same pattern of gaining efficiencies and declining costs that we saw in each prior technological revolution emerge as the industry ascends its S-curve. As this happens, we will again enjoy the tremendous anti-inflationary pressures of technological progress.

What’s critical here is that, just as the first steam engines and steel forges transformed our nation’s physical landscape, biology will do something similar. But instead of extraction, this technological vector can in fact help us regenerate Spaceship Earth, at a crucial moment. This is the first time in human history that we find ourselves on the precipice of ecological collapse, and also a technological revolution with the potential to curb it. The impact potential is positive not only the economy, but for human health and planetary health alike. This is one reason, even in the face of global conflict, economic and ecological stress, I remain optimistic for our world our grandkids will inherit and inhabit.