Redwood Trees

The canopy of a mature redwood forest functions like an aerial meadow—a flat surface capturing sunlight at roughly the same rate as a grassland prairie. But this meadow is raised on stilts over 100 meters tall. A substantial proportion of each tree's energy is 'wasted' feeding those stilts, which do nothing productive beyond lofting the canopy into the air. As Richard Dawkins observes: 'Trees are standing monuments to futile competition—futile if we think in terms of a planned economy.'

The tallest known tree, Hyperion, stands at 116.07 meters in a California redwood forest. George Koch's research team calculated the theoretical maximum at 122-130 meters—the point where gravity makes water transport to the canopy impossible. Leaves at the treetops already live in perpetual drought despite abundant groundwater below; they're simply too far from the water source. The trees hit a physical ceiling imposed by plumbing constraints.

The competitive logic is ruthless. Imagine a hypothetical 'Forest of Friendship' where all trees agree to stay 10 feet tall—equally sharing sunlight while conserving energy. Now introduce one mutant that grows marginally taller. This rogue immediately captures more photons than its neighbors, more than compensating for the extra trunk cost. Natural selection favors defection. Other trees must follow or die in shade. The escalation proceeds until physical limits impose a truce.

Redwoods grow remarkably fast when given light: 18 inches in the first year, 2-6 feet annually for the first decade. But they can also persist in deep shade for decades, waiting. When a canopy gap opens—through fire, windfall, or logging—suppressed understory trees explode upward. The strategy combines patience with opportunistic aggression: survive the wait, then sprint when opportunity appears.

The business parallel is advertising arms races, feature wars, and executive compensation escalation. Each company must match competitors' marketing spend, product features, or CEO pay—not because these expenditures are intrinsically optimal, but because unilateral disarmament means competitive death. Industries collectively waste resources on escalation that benefits none, yet no individual firm can afford to defect from the race.

Dawkins' observation crystallizes the insight: in a designed economy there would be no tall trees, no forests, no canopy. The resources feeding trunks could instead feed reproduction, defense, or root expansion. But evolution doesn't design economies; it responds to local competition. And local competition produces global waste. The same dynamic appears wherever relative position matters more than absolute capability: status goods, positional education, geographic rent, and corporate empire-building all follow redwood logic.