If you ask an economist what’s driven economic growth, it’s been major advances in things that mattered - the mechanization of farming, mass manufacturing, things like that. The problem is, our society is not organized around doing that.

Page contrasts historically transformative, productivity-boosting innovations (e.g., mechanized agriculture and mass manufacturing) with what he sees as a modern misalignment of incentives. The quote argues that sustained economic growth tends to come from large-scale technological advances that change how essential goods and services are produced, not merely from incremental improvements or financial engineering. His concluding claim—“our society is not organized around doing that”—suggests that institutions (markets, regulation, corporate governance, education, and research funding) may reward short-term optimization over ambitious, high-risk projects with broad social payoff. Implicitly, he is advocating for structures that better support long-horizon, “big bet” innovation.