Technology, to Heidegger, is whatever directs existence toward utility. Its expression is solely in its “enframing” (Ge-Stell), or the way by which technology recontextualizes all objects and even subjects by function: stones enframed as cutters of stones, rocks as producers of fire—a painting framed as a material asset, music measured only to rally morale or seduce (reproduced images, and recorded music, popularized these intentions). It follows, logically, that all frames are reversible, and might be hung upside-down: A man makes a thing, until the thing remakes the man. For Heidegger, the only way out of these co-instrumentalizing binds is Gelassenheit—“releasement”—which is to accept technology’s outward convenience, but refuse its inward reconfiguration. How to do this, however, he never explains.

[...] we cannot all cut our way to growth at the same time. For someone to benefit from a reduction in wages (becoming more cost-competitive), there must be someone else who is willing to spend money on what that person produces. John Maynard Keynes rightly referred to this as "the paradox of thrift": if we all save at once there is no consumption to stimulate investment.