AGI isn’t arriving gradually. It’s accelerating toward us like a collision.
I’ve been turning this judgment over in my mind lately. The more I look at it, the more jarring it feels—and the more true: in this era that’s arriving at an accelerating pace, what’s already in hand is becoming a privilege, while creating something new increasingly feels like breaking the rules.
We were taught to “create growth.” To work ourselves to the bone, innovate relentlessly, and prove ourselves from scratch. Growth was justice, expansion was the right thing to do, and newcomers who worked hard enough could get a slice of the pie. That was the fairy tale of the growth era.
Now that fairy tale is falling apart.
The things that truly have value are increasingly less likely to be “newly created” and increasingly more likely to be “already in someone’s hands.”
Computing power is stock.
High-quality data is stock.
Model weights that have already been trained, aligned, and deployed are stock.
Existing user relationships, channels, brand recognition, regulatory approvals, and capital backing are all stock.
Once these things are in place, they become strongly exclusionary. For newcomers, building up an equivalent “stock” is prohibitively expensive, and they often have to contend with all kinds of explicit and implicit constraints. Copyright, data compliance, computing quotas, security reviews, the delicate balance between antitrust and “fair competition”... Often, you don’t lose because you lack the ability—you lose because “you’re not entitled to own it first.”
By contrast, those who already own stock are beginning to enjoy treatment that borders on privilege. They can use their stock to generate more stock, feed existing data into better models, use existing computing power to lower marginal costs, and leverage existing trust to enter new domains. Compounding is accelerating wildly on their side, while newcomers are still struggling just to secure “the right to enter.”
That is the cruel reality of “stock is privilege.”
And “growth is a violation” is more insidious—and more painful.
Not all innovation is encouraged. As the system shifts from rapid expansion to meticulous control, any growth that might disrupt the existing order is easily labeled a “risk,” “non-compliant,” or “disruptive.” Want to use a new method to get around old barriers? You could be ruled in violation. Want to train a model using a more aggressive data strategy? You could cross a red line. Want to carve out an incremental market on the turf of established giants? Regulators, platform rules, and public opinion could all suddenly turn against you.
Growth is no longer inherently virtuous; it now needs to be “permitted.”
To offer my subjective take: this isn’t a conspiracy by any one person or company, but a natural outcome of the interaction between technology and power. The stronger AGI becomes, the more deeply it depends on data and computing power—and both naturally concentrate in the hands of the biggest players. Once that concentration takes hold, preserving it is easier than creating a more dispersed landscape, and more rational from the perspective of those who already benefit. Rules will gradually tilt toward protecting what is already in place, even as people keep talking about “encouraging innovation.”
Most people are the ones most likely to be harmed by this shift.
Many people are still following the playbook of the growth era: learning new skills, starting businesses, creating content, and hustling at side gigs, believing that if they just work hard enough, they can claim a share of the next wave of gains. But the reality is that skills themselves are rapidly losing value, while the assets, relationships, and gateways that have already been built up are what can truly compound. People are still working hard, but if they’re still focused on “creating growth from scratch,” the returns may keep shrinking.
This isn’t a call to give up; it’s a call to see clearly.
If stock is becoming a privilege, then the most important thing for ordinary people to do isn’t blindly chase growth, but find a way to turn whatever they can get their hands on right now into their own “small stock” as quickly as possible. Even if it’s just a deep understanding of a niche, a stable user base, a reusable workflow, or sound judgment proven over time. These things won’t automatically disappear in the AGI era; if anything, their scarcity may make them more valuable.
At the same time, we need to be wary of our own obsession with the “myth of growth.” Not every new thing is worth pursuing. Some supposed growth is merely bait dangled by those who already own the stock, or a brief window before the rules fully close in. Once the window shuts, what once seemed like an “opportunity” could become a “violation.”
The AGI era is rapidly approaching. It’s not just technology that’s accelerating, but the rewriting of the rules as well.
Stock is privilege; growth is a violation.
This sounds harsh, but it’s closer to reality than most feel-good platitudes. Accepting it doesn’t mean resigning yourself to fate; it means finally beginning to see the world through the right lens.#Anthropic拒绝延期IPO，本周路演估值几何？
