One of the unrecognized reasons growth and productivity has slowed down is that our appetite for risk has decreased. I am not citing this as a bad thing, necessarily, just observing.

I don’t have the time nor the skill (at least not without a whole lot more work) to make a good model for this, but I’d guess this knocks about half a percent of GDP off per year. The tradeoff is that a lot fewer people die or are injured than otherwise would be. This is primarily a good thing. Heck, it might all be a good thing because about 95%+ of productivity gains go to the ultra-rich now, so giving them less money is probably a big net win.

Here I am not referring to worksite OSHA violations, more so unproven, potentially-dangerous non-online/internet technologies that in previous eras we would’ve just run with but now either get squelched or not built at all.

Again, this isn’t normative-leaning, just an observation of the world.