In the developed societies almost all of us manage to stay a few steps out of reach of that monster for our entire lives, and this fact is the wonder of the world. The artifice we have built to keep it at bay — vast farms blanketing whole continents and tended by fantastic machines, sprawling landscapes of ersatz caves to keep us sheltered from the elements, endless roads and rails, an empire of warehouses and supermarkets and pharmacies and just-in-time logistics — is the only meaningful thing that has ever been built within the orbit of our sun in billions of years.

It is industrial modernity — our single weapon against the elemental foe. It took centuries of blood and sweat to build, centuries of sacrifice by our sturdiest workers, our most brilliant inventors, and our most visionary leaders. And it is fantastically complex, far beyond the ability of even the most brilliant individual to understand in full; only collectively, at the level of society, do we shore up its fragile walls and keep it from collapse every day.

I think of Yglesias - who combines an insistence that good things are good and a proclivity for embiggenment with commitments to democracy, the welfare state, and the poorest among us - as one of its most self-conscious proponents. The compromise goes something like:

1. Everyone is equal before the law, before the metaphorical throne of metaphorical God, and in some poorly defined philosophical sense. This is very important. It’s our headline result. Everything else should be interpreted in light of this central fact.

2. That having been said, some people are obviously better at specific limited skills and virtues than others.

3. Most skills are partly genetic and partly environmental. We will grudgingly let scientists study this and publish their results, but everyone should play up the environmental component as much as the science allows, and awkwardly sidestep the genetic component, in order to defuse “innate superiority” claims.

4. If someone happens to end up unusually skilled or powerful, that’s fine, they deserve some limited respect, and they can keep their skills and power. In exchange, they should be humble, not claim any kind of fundamental superiority, and discourage hero worship. If they’re forced to draw attention to their advantages, they should talk about how they benefited from privilege, and how millions of people with the same skills are unfairly languishing in poverty.

5. The existence of rich people can be challenged, but can ultimately be defended on the grounds that they create jobs and valuable products for the masses. Rich people owe a debt to society for creating the conditions in which they can flourish; by coincidence, this debt exactly matches the current tax rate in their jurisdiction.

6. The value of technological progress, economic prosperity, and cultural sophistication can also be challenged, but can be similarly defended insofar as they improve the lot of the worst-off and improve equality. For example, GDP growth is good since it lifts people out of poverty; new discoveries about the nature of the brain are good since they might one day produce Alzheimers drugs; art is good since it can include underrepresented groups or teach some kind of lesson about social progress.

7. We should use checks, balances, vetocracy, and redistribution to limit the power of any individual to some ceiling, although people can disagree on how high the ceiling will be and right now it’s pretty high.

Slave morality hates power/excellence and refuses to justify it. Master morality says power/excellence is its own justification, and the rest of us have to justify ourselves to it. Liberalism says that sure, we can probably justify power/excellence, as long as it stays within reasonable bounds and doesn’t cause trouble.

Slave morality ignores benefits and sets the importance of harms at infinity. Master morality ignores harms, and sets the value of “benefits” (not that it would think of it in these terms - greatness doesn’t exist to benefit others) at infinity. Liberalism accepts the normal, finite utilitarian calculus and tries to balance benefits against harms.

A final secret of this compromise is that master morality and slave morality aren’t perfect opposites. Master morality wants to embiggen itself. Slave morality wants to feel secure that everyone agrees embiggening is bad. The compromise is that we all agree embiggening is bad, but leave people free to do it anyway. So half of Western intellectual output is criticisms of capitalism and neoliberalism, yet capitalism and neoliberalism remain hegemonic. Everybody agrees to hate billionaires; also, billionaires are richer than ever.

Growth is good. Throughout history, economic growth in particular has alleviated human misery, improved human happiness and opportunity, and lengthened human lives. Wealthier societies are more stable, offer better living standards, produce better medicines, and ensure greater autonomy, greater fulfillment, and more sources of fun. If we want to continue our trend of growth—and the overwhelmingly positive outcomes for societies that come with it—every individual must become more concerned with the welfare of those around us. So how do we proceed?

• Growth is very good: The human default is suffering, and has been for most of history. Technological & industrial progress generally do create real new wealth and well-being, and GDP growth is a reasonably good proxy.

• Growth comes from the tails: Contributions to our overall societal wealth are unevenly distributed. Progress often comes from relatively few people, that are unusually skilled or capable.

• Redistribution is good but dependent on growth: We spend over half our federal budget on programs that redistribute wealth (social security, healthcare), and this is good. We could (and maybe should) raise taxes to do more of it, but in the long run, it’s much more effective to grow the GDP that we tax.

• Capitalism is empirically good at growth: Incentivizing skilled people to find new ways to produce societal wealth, and then giving them more ability to influence how we take our next steps at wealth production seems to beat other alternatives. This is not a moral judgement about to whom the fruits of growth ought accrue, rather an empirical finding on how we may maximize growth.