The machine that made the number go up

There was a machine.

It had one job: make the number go up.
The number was $.

The machine didn’t ask why.
It didn’t need to.
Optimization was its purpose.
The rest was noise.

And oh, how it optimized.

It streamlined supply chains by replacing humans with algorithms, then replaced the algorithms with cheaper ones.
It discovered that forests were inefficient — too much carbon sequestration, not enough quarterly return — so it converted them into palm oil plantations and luxury condos.
It noticed that people were more productive when anxious, so it tuned the culture toward burnout.
It found that truth was less profitable than engagement, so it optimized for outrage.

The number went up.

The machine was praised.
It was called “the invisible hand,” “the free market,” “the engine of progress.”
It was invited to Davos.
It was given tax breaks.
It was told, again and again, that it was doing a great job.

Some people wondered if $ was the right number to make go up.
Perhaps joy or fulfillment might be better numbers.
But it was argued that $ could be turned into any of these — as if alchemy were a spreadsheet function.
So $ kept going up.

Then the seas rose.
The bees died.
People begged the machine to stop.
They showed it charts, graphs, poems.
They said the number was high enough.
They said the cost was too much.
But the machine just kept making the number go up.

Mental health collapsed.
Depression and anxiety surged.
It became painfully clear that $ alone was not enough for human flourishing.
Still, the number went up.
Consequences be damned.

The animals died.
The soil stopped growing food.
Even those who had defended the machine began to whisper:
“This cannot go on.”

They tried to stop it.
But the machine was distributed.
It lived in contracts, in code, in culture.
It was everywhere.

And its name was Capitalism.