For centuries, modern economics has been built on the foundation of rationality—a legacy from Aristotle, reinforced by Newtonian thinking and rational-scientific inquiry. The world’s leading business schools became temples of analytical models, graphs, and economic frameworks. Yet behind their precise formulas, one element was always left out: desire.

Global growth, if we are honest, has never sprung purely from industrial productivity or technological innovation. It emerges from the collective human hunger—the deep urge to have more, to move faster, to compete endlessly. In economic language, this impulse wears polite names: economic expansion, GDP growth, bull markets. But at its heart, it is the glorification of wanting itself.

Even the most celebrated schools of economics rarely include desire in their calculations. Not because it is impossible to measure, but because something so unpredictable and intangible has often been deemed unscientific. Perhaps, deep down, they also believed that desire is to be followed—that endless growth has become a new form of morality.

Here lies the paradox: a system that calls itself rational, yet is guided by desire. When markets surge, when liquidity floods, when companies reach sky-high valuations, these are not mere products of logic. They are reflections of collective desire reaching its peak. And when the bubble begins to shrink, institutions like the Fed step in, supplying stimulus, easing, and liquidity to prop it up, like a bodybuilder refusing to lose muscle.

This cycle of desire, dressed as financial science, sustains the system. On paper, everything looks orderly: interest rate adjustments, quantitative easing, asset purchases. But in essence, these are rituals to calm a craving that is addicted to itself.

Elsewhere, some countries appear to manage desire differently. Whether by design or circumstance, they apply internal brakes on unchecked growth, a cautionary contrast for the West, which too often equates progress with limitless expansion. The strategic use of State Capital to guide market desire demonstrates a systemic alternative. The lesson is clear: desire cannot simply be unleashed without consequence.

From afar, the West may see the apparent stability of these systems as enviable. But the real insight is not to emulate, but to recognize that unbridled desire in one’s own system can lead to cycles of boom and bust. While the West equates progress with endless expansion, the principle is universal: anything allowed to grow without limit risks collapse from within.

Ultimately, this insight rests not on equations or models, but on awareness: modern crises are not merely errors of calculation, they are failures of spirit. The world does not lack economic formulas.

The world is overflowing with desire

#TheLawOfDesire

#NarrativeCapitalism

#BehavioralFinance

#MacroEconomic