Source: Seth's Blog
Seth Godin identifies a specific capture mechanism: the moment a society agrees to measure success by a metric (engagement, likes, GDP growth), that metric becomes profitable to optimize for, and the original values get crowded out. This explains why platforms engineer for addictive engagement rather than user wellbeing, and why companies chase quarterly earnings over long-term product quality. The measurement system itself has become the business model. The trap isn't coercion—it's that once we voluntarily adopt metrics as proxies for what matters, they calcify into the only things that matter, and the original intention disappears.