Looking back over the past 500 years, what has truly driven the forward march of human civilization? Stripping away the complex historical details, I believe the core boils down to three things:
1. Technological progress (growing the pie). Tech has boosted productivity and efficiency, enabling mass production of goods and services at low cost. Without this, humanity would remain trapped in a zero-sum game of "you eat more, I eat less."
2. Checks on power and decentralization (preventing total reset). The biggest flaw in historical cycles was the lack of checks on power. Once top-level decisions went awry, the system couldn't self-correct, leading to errors all the way down until the table was flipped, wealth wiped out, and everything restarted. Modern checks and balances essentially install a "daily stop-loss" mechanism for society—allowing for fine-tuning when mistakes happen, avoiding the need to reset from zero every time. As long as we don't reset to zero, human technology and wealth can accumulate compound interest across generations.
3. The maturation of financial services (the most efficient leverage). Tech and institutions alone aren't enough; finance is the ultimate accelerator. It does two powerful things: first, it lets us "spend future money on today's needs," discounting expected returns from the next few decades into today's R&D and infrastructure spending. Second, through limited liability companies and capital markets, it slices and distributes massive innovation risks. Thanks to this financial leverage, the speed at which tech moves from labs to large-scale commercial use has been magnified countless times.
On reflection, these three principles mirror investment logic perfectly: tech creates positive returns, finance adds leverage to amplify efficiency, and decentralized error-correction mechanisms lock in the risk control floor of "maximum drawdown."
A system that continuously creates value and has mechanisms ensuring it never faces a "total reset" will inevitably see exponential prosperity when viewed over centuries.
Standing on the day after the Nasdaq crash, looking ahead to the next 50 years, how should we expect things to unfold? I remain optimistic about the progress tech brings to humanity, which is why I hold a portfolio heavy on tech stocks (enjoying the highs, but also feeling the sadness like last night). I believe we, and our children, will enjoy better lives with the help of technology.$Tesla(TSLA.US) $Taiwan Semiconductor(TSM.US)
