Antifeatures

Software runs our world.  Whatever apparatus you’re reading this note on has programs and operating systems which allow you to receive and delete (hopefully not too quickly) this note.  Some of the code runs in the background doing things I’ll never understand, but other parts of it create feature or functionality designed to be useful to us as users.  Occasionally, a behavior crops up on your phone, computer, car, or other pieces of technology that is annoying (e.g., the Y2K Bug) and diminishes utility.  In between features and bugs are antifeatures.  These are lines of code written intentionally that do not enhance the user’s experience.  Adware is a great example of antifeatures; skillfully embedding target-specific advertisements does not help your experience on a web browser for instance, but it was put there intentionally.

Our economy has both features and bugs.  While not entirely laissez fair, it’s market-driven design has helped produce some incredible inventions over the centuries.  Unfortunately, adware is one of them.  But from medical breakthroughs, better understanding of the nature of reality through physical sciences, bifocals, or something as “simple” as a percolator to brew coffee have all come to fruition in part because of the feature side of a market-based economy.  Now don’t get me wrong, it has some bugs.  For instance, it hasn’t solved (and likely exacerbates) the chasm between the haves and have-nots.  And the business cycle is just that, a cycle.  One which varies between growth and contractions, sometimes ending up in full booms and busts.  The point being that market driven economies go through ups and downs.  But what about anitfeatures?  The title says antifeatures.

As it turns out, America’s central bank may be working on one right now as they combat inflation.  Price changes are hotter today than at any point since the early 1980s, and it caught the Federal Reserve off guard.  To extinguish it, the central bank is trying to slow output and increase unemployment.  These smack of antifeatures to Atlas because these intentional outcomes are certainly not enhancing the experience of those individuals impacted by such efforts, but it is deliberate.  Atlas sees slowing in a variety of indicators that the Federal Reserve follows, but they haven’t let up yet, and they might not be able to either until the threat of runaway inflation is gone.