What If Tech, the Market and the State Are No Longer Solutions?

If we study the problems outside the force-field of mythological beliefs, we find that there are no systemic solutions, there are only partial, local solutions.

The status quo rests on a foundational belief that all problems, regardless of their nature, can be solved by technology, the market or the government (i.e. the state), or some combination of these three.

Which one is the paramount solution depends on the specifics of the problem, of course, but what's proposed as a solution also depends on which of the three has gained our primary loyalty: to true believers in technology, there's always a tech fix. To true believers in the market, unleashing the market will fix any problem. To true believers in the power of the state, the Savior State is always the go-to solution.

These solutions transform from practical toolboxes into mythologies when they become simplified belief structures, in effect articles of faith populated with heathens, heretics, true believers, taboos and excommunication. The limits of each toolbox are set aside in favor of a belief in the unlimited magical powers of the tools.

We know we've entered the realm of mythologies when expressing doubts about the efficacy of tech, the market or the state unleashes an infuriated indignation that the gods of tech, the market and the state are being questioned, even as the proof of their powers are everywhere.

The difference between a toolbox and a mythology is every tool has limits, where mythology has no limits. If we're trying to drive nails with a handsaw, we're not going to find much success. We're forced to admit the tool isn't going to solve the problem.

But once we're embedded in a mythological structure, then we see play-acting as a legitimate solution. So a diesel-fueled robot that roams the fields zapping weeds with lasers is the "solution" to food insecurity. See, there's a tech solution to every problem. But the robot--AI!--can't make it rain, or stop the windstorm that destroyed the harvest, or nurture the depleted soil. The robot is a phantom solution, a "solution" that meets the requirements of the mythology--there must be a tech solution--but doesn't actually solve the problem of food insecurity, which is complex, structural and systemic.

Here is a Venn diagram of the status quo understanding of problems and solutions all problems exist within the loving embrace of tech, the market and the state, and therefore all problems can be solved by applying various mixtures of these three elixirs.



Here is the real-world situation, stripped of mythology and play-acting: the majority of the core problems are either made worse by tech, the market and the state--Anti-Progress writ large-- or they're beyond the reach of these conventional tools.



This Venn diagram causes howls of protest and shrieks of agony: how dare you! Of course there are tech solutions, market solutions and government solutions to every problem under the sun. What else is there?

What's missing from this faith in mythologies is the recognition that the conventional solutions must comply with implicit rules that limit their efficacy. Any "solution" must not disrupt the status quo's power structure, which has been over-optimized to the point of extreme fragility, a dynamic I discussed in Six Dynamics That Will Shape Our Future.

In other words, any "solution" must leave existing profit streams untouched and the power pyramid as-is. Given this constraint, and the fragility created by over-optimization, the only "solutions" that are acceptable to those at the top of the pyramid are play-acting "solutions", proposals presented as magical fixes that actually fix nothing, or create new problems--the definition of Anti-Progress.

To state this out loud is deeply offensive, for we've been trained to worship at the altars of technology, the market and the state. It's considered good sport to deride the limits of state solutions, but it's anathema to question the limits of technology or the market.

Markets only "solve problems" via infinite substitution of scarcities. OK, so we wiped out wild fisheries, the fix is fish farms. We bulldozed the native forests, the solution is tree farms. That each substitution isn't actually a functional substitute, and is a much lower quality that the original, is taboo.

That "the market solution" to declining profitability is monopoly (eliminating competition and transparency), addiction and reducing quality is also taboo.

What "problem" did social media solve? Or is social media now another "problem" that has no solution? But now that social media has created trillion-dollar enterprises, it can't be questioned as a "good thing." There are tech solutions, market solutions, state regulations--of course we can "fix" social media's Anti-Progress.

As with all "solutions" satisfactory to the system, all these "solutions" are play-acting: they sound good, everyone can click "like" or "heart" the "solution," but nothing actually changes.

If we study the problems outside the force-field of mythological beliefs, we find that there are no systemic solutions, there are only partial, local solutions that we put in place ourselves. Rather then expect tech, the market and the state to "fix" healthcare, we're better off accepting the system has no solutions because the profit streams and power structure are sacrosanct and cannot be touched, even though they're the source of the problem.

The only real, non-play-acting solution is to get healthy and reduce our dependence on "healthcare" to an absolute minimum. This approach applies to every problem in the red circle in the diagram above.

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My recent books:

Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases originated via links to Amazon products on this site.

The Mythology of Progress, Anti-Progress and a Mythology for the 21st Century print $18, (Kindle $8.95, Hardcover $24 (215 pages, 2024) Read the Introduction and first chapter for free (PDF)

Self-Reliance in the 21st Century print $18, (Kindle $8.95, audiobook $13.08 (96 pages, 2022) Read the first chapter for free (PDF)

The Asian Heroine Who Seduced Me (Novel) print $10.95, Kindle $6.95 Read an excerpt for free (PDF)

When You Can't Go On: Burnout, Reckoning and Renewal $18 print, $8.95 Kindle ebook; audiobook Read the first section for free (PDF)

Global Crisis, National Renewal: A (Revolutionary) Grand Strategy for the United States (Kindle $9.95, print $24, audiobook) Read Chapter One for free (PDF).

A Hacker's Teleology: Sharing the Wealth of Our Shrinking Planet (Kindle $8.95, print $20, audiobook $17.46) Read the first section for free (PDF).

Will You Be Richer or Poorer?: Profit, Power, and AI in a Traumatized World
(Kindle $5, print $10, audiobook) Read the first section for free (PDF).

The Adventures of the Consulting Philosopher: The Disappearance of Drake (Novel) $4.95 Kindle, $10.95 print); read the first chapters for free (PDF)

Money and Work Unchained $6.95 Kindle, $15 print) Read the first section for free


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The Easy Credit, High Interest Rate Swindle

When 21% interest rate credit cards are the only thing keeping the lid on awakening and revolt, that's not a sustainable fix.

The easy credit, high interest rate swindle has been a financial feature of the landscape for so long it's rarely examined for what it is: not just a reliably profitable swindle, but as a safety valve for a broken system. We all know how it works, either from experience or observation: credit cards are distributed like candy on Holloween, with one little kicker: a dose of financial fentanyl is included: insanely high rates of interest, i.e. 21% and up, and rapacious late fees.

The credit card issuers know most of the uncreditworthy creditors they sent cards to will eventually default, but this is fine because the high interest rates and stiff penalties will extract enough wealth from the debt-serfs to make the game profitable. This foreknowledge is what makes it a swindle: we know you want credit, we know you'll quickly get over your head and owe us a balance, and we know the exorbitant monthly interest on that ballooning balance will eat you alive, and you'll default.

But we also know enough of you will struggle on, paying the interest and penalties, for long enough to make the swindle profitable: the writedowns of defaults will be more than offset by the interest and penalties.

All this is obvious, and dismissed as "the free market in action:" nobody forced folks to accept the credit card, or forced the company to issue the cards, everyone knew the interest rate was 21%, and so high interest and defaults are just desserts to all involved.

All this is certainly true: nobody was coerced into agreeing to those terms. But like everything else in our broken system, this isn't the whole story.

The untold story is the decades-long decay of the purchasing power of wages has put the "American lifestyle" out of reach for many. In a consumer economy, only four things are valued: profits, wealth, power and attention. These provide status, i.e. a sense of selfhood in the social hierarchy.

A consumer economy greases the gears of commerce with infinite desire: there's always a new "must have" novelty that grants status, a new experience that begs to be ticket-punched with a selfie, and in the Attention Economy created by social media platforms, another "like" or "heart" to seek for self-validation: look at me! I'm worthy of attention!

Viewed through the lens of decaying purchasing power, credit is now necessary to fill the gap between earnings and expenses. Second and third gig jobs help fill the gap, but all the goodies of the "American lifestyle" are still out of reach without the plastic fantastic of credit. OK, so the take-home pay is $1,800, and the rent is $1,800, the gig jobs buy food and pay utilities, but what about the trip to Vegas and the tickets to the "must see" concert tour? Isn't this what credit cards are for?

Indeed. At first, the gamers in the credit-casino see a way to win: pay off the balance at 21% with a 0% interest new card dangled oh so compellingly, and then repeat this more or less forever. But the swindlers know the game all too well, and after the third or fourth such offer, all the cards revert to 21%.

Filling the gap between what wages once funded and what they no longer fund now with credit doesn't work because the interest soon consumes the income needed to pay for essentials.

This widening gap between earnings and expenses must be filled, or those who can no longer afford the "American lifestyle" become a political wrecking ball. Imagine if credit card interest rates were capped at conventional 30-year mortgage rates plus 1%, so 7% plus 1% = 8% as the top rate for credit card balances. And imagine late fees were capped at $20.

Credit card lenders would immediately stop issuing cards to uncreditworthy households, as the losses would no longer be covered by sky-high interest rates and penalties. Absent the 21+% interest rates, credit is no longer profitable except to those with very high credit scores--the type of people who pay off the cards every month, paying the issuers zero interest or penalties. Oh boo-hoo, there goes our fat profits.

The reality is easy credit is the safety valve for a system that is no longer affordable to the masses depending on wages for their livelihood. Without easy credit, people would be forced to wake up to the reality that the "American lifestyle" they desire is out of reach, and this will eventually anger them as they see the top 10% enjoying the riches bestowed by asset bubbles, and the next 10% enjoying the professional salaries and benefits of top earners.

When the essentials are no longer affordable, people start doing things like tearing down the Bastille, and authorities respond by suppressing the rage with a whiff of grapeshot, and then things unravel faster than anyone believed possible.

It's increasingly common to promote a debt jubilee as the solution, but this doesn't address the core issue, which is the widening gap between earnings and the cost of essentials. A debt jubilee is just another flavor of an expedient stopgap measure intended to keep the broken, corrupt system glued together for another year or two, to make it seem as if the system isn't fundamentally broken and soaring inequality isn't its primary dynamic.

When 21% interest rate credit cards are the only thing keeping the lid on awakening and revolt, that's not a sustainable fix. As noted here recently, the problem with using financial fentanyl as the "solution" is no one can tell if the dose is fatal until it's too late.

---

My recent books:

Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases originated via links to Amazon products on this site.

The Mythology of Progress, Anti-Progress and a Mythology for the 21st Century print $18, (Kindle $8.95, Hardcover $24 (215 pages, 2024) Read the Introduction and first chapter for free (PDF)

Self-Reliance in the 21st Century print $18, (Kindle $8.95, audiobook $13.08 (96 pages, 2022) Read the first chapter for free (PDF)

The Asian Heroine Who Seduced Me (Novel) print $10.95, Kindle $6.95 Read an excerpt for free (PDF)

When You Can't Go On: Burnout, Reckoning and Renewal $18 print, $8.95 Kindle ebook; audiobook Read the first section for free (PDF)

Global Crisis, National Renewal: A (Revolutionary) Grand Strategy for the United States (Kindle $9.95, print $24, audiobook) Read Chapter One for free (PDF).

A Hacker's Teleology: Sharing the Wealth of Our Shrinking Planet (Kindle $8.95, print $20, audiobook $17.46) Read the first section for free (PDF).

Will You Be Richer or Poorer?: Profit, Power, and AI in a Traumatized World
(Kindle $5, print $10, audiobook) Read the first section for free (PDF).

The Adventures of the Consulting Philosopher: The Disappearance of Drake (Novel) $4.95 Kindle, $10.95 print); read the first chapters for free (PDF)

Money and Work Unchained $6.95 Kindle, $15 print) Read the first section for free


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I Quit! The Tsunami of Burnout Few See

That's the problem with deploying play-acting as "solutions:" play-acting doesn't actually fix the problems at the source, it simply lets the problems run to failure.

By now, we all know the name of the game is narrative control: we no longer face problems directly and attempt to solve them at their source, we play-act "solutions" that leave the actual problems unrecognized, undiagnosed and unaddressed, on the idea that if cover them up long enough they'll magically go away.

The core narrative control is straightforward: 1) everything's great, and 2) if it's not great, it's going to be great. Whatever's broken is going to get fixed, AI is wunnerful, and so on.

All of these narratives are what I call Happy Stories in the Village of Happy People, a make-believe staging of plucky entrepreneurs minting fortunes, new leadership, technology making our lives better in every way, nonstop binge-worthy entertainment, and look at me, I'm in a selfie-worthy mis en scene that looks natural but was carefully staged to make me look like a winner in the winner-take-most game we're all playing, whether we're aware of it or not.

Meanwhile, off-stage in the real world, people are walking off their jobs: I quit! They're not giving notice, they're just quitting: not coming back from lunch, or resigning without notice.

We collect statistics in the Village of Happy People, but not about real life. We collect stats on GDP "growth," the number of people with jobs, corporate profits, and so on. We don't bother collecting data on why people quit, or why people burn out, or what conditions eventually break them.

Burnout isn't well-studied or understood. It didn't even have a name when I first burned out in the 1980s. It's an amorphous topic because it covers such a wide range of human conditions and experiences.

It's a topic that's implicitly avoided in the Village of Happy People, where the narrative control Happy Story is: it's your problem, not the system's problem, and here's a bunch of psycho-babble "weird tricks" to keep yourself glued together as the unrelenting pressure erodes your resilience until there's none left.

Prisoners of war learn many valuable lessons about the human condition. One is that everyone has a breaking point, everyone cracks. There are no god-like humans; everyone breaks at some point. This process isn't within our control; we can't will ourselves not to crack. We can try, but it's beyond our control. This process isn't predictable. The Strong Leader everyone reckons is unbreakable might crack first, and the milquetoast ordinary person might last the longest.

Those who haven't burned out / been broken have no way to understand the experience. They want to help, and suggest listening to soothing music, or taking a vacation to "recharge." They can't understand that to the person in the final stages of burnout, music is a distraction, and they have no more energy for a vacation than they have for work. Even planning a vacation is beyond their grasp, much less grinding through travel. They're too drained to enjoy anything that's proposed as "rejuvenating."

We're trained to tell ourselves we can do it, that sustained super-human effort is within everyone's reach, "just do it." This is the core cheerleader narrative of the Village of Happy People: we can all overcome any obstacle if we just try harder. That the end-game of trying harder is collapse is taboo.

But we're game until we too collapse. We're mystified by our insomnia, our sudden outbursts, our lapses of focus, and as the circle tightens we jettison whatever we no longer have the energy to sustain, which ironically is everything that sustained us.

We reserve whatever dregs of energy we have for work, and since work isn't sustaining us in any way other than financial, the circle tightens until there's no energy left for anything. So we quit, not because we want to per se, but because continuing is no longer an option, and quitting is a last-ditch effort at self-preservation.

Thanks to the Happy Stories endlessly repeated in the Village of Happy People, we can't believe what's happening to us. We think, this can't be happening to me, I'm resourceful, a problem-solver, a go-getter, I have will power, so why am I banging my head against a wall in frustration? Why can't I find the energy to have friends over?

All these experiences are viewed through the lens of the mental health industry which is blind to the systemic nature of stress and pressure, and so the "fixes" are medications to tamp down what's diagnosed not as burnout but as depression or anxiety, in other words, the symptoms, not the cause.

And so we wonder what's happening to us, as the experience is novel and nobody else seems to be experiencing it. Nobody seems willing to tell the truth, that it's all play-acting: that employers "really care about our employees, you're family," when the reality is we're all interchangeable cogs in the machine that focuses solely on keeping us glued together to do the work.

Why people crack and quit is largely unexplored territory. In my everyday life, three people I don't know quit suddenly. I know about it because their leaving left their workplaces in turmoil, as there are no ready replacements. One person was working two jobs to afford to live in an expensive locale, and the long commute and long hours of her main job became too much. So the other tech is burning out trying to cover her customer base.

In another case, rude / unpleasant customers might have been the last straw, along with a host of other issues. In the moment, the final trigger could be any number of things, but the real issue is the total weight of stress generated by multiple, reinforcing sources of internal and external pressure.

There's a widespread belief that people will take whatever jobs are available when the economy slumps into recession. This presumes people are still able to work. Consider this chart of disability. Few seem interested in exploring this dramatic increase. If anyone mentions it, it's attributed to the pandemic. But is that the sole causal factor?



We're experiencing stagflation, and it may well just be getting started. If history is any guide, costs can continue to rise for quite some time as the purchasing power of wages erodes and asset bubbles deflate. As noted in a previous post, depending on financial fentanyl to keep everything glued together is risky, because we can't tell if the dose is fatal until it's too late.



A significant percentage of the data presented in my posts tells a story that is taboo in the Village of Happy People: everyday life is much harder now, and getting harder. Life was much easier, less overwhelming, more stable and more prosperous in decades past. Wages went farther--a lot farther. I have documented this in dozens of posts.

My Social Security wage records go back 54 years, to 1970, the summer in high school I picked pineapple for Dole. Being a data hound, I laboriously entered the inflation rate as calculated by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (which many see as grossly understating actual inflation) to state each year's earnings in current dollars.

Of my top eight annual earnings, two were from the 1970s, two were from the 1980s, three from the 1990s and only one in the 21st century. Please note that the nominal value of my labor has increased with time / inflation; what we're measuring here is the purchasing power / value of my wages over time.

That the purchasing power of my wages in the 1970s as an apprentice carpenter exceeded almost all the rest of my decades of labor should ring alarm bells. But this too is taboo in the Village of Happy People: of course life is better now because "progress is unstoppable." But is it "progress" if our wages have lost value for 45 years? If precarity on multiple levels is now the norm? If the burdens of shadow work are pushing us over the tipping point?

This is systemic, it's not unique to me. Everyone working in the 70s earned more when measured in purchasing power rather than nominal dollars, and the prosperity of the 80s and 90s was widespread. In the 21st century, not so much: it's a winner-take-most scramble that most of us lose, while the winners get to pull the levers of the narrative control machinery to gush how everything's great, and it's going to get better.

I've burned out twice, once in my early 30s and again in my mid-60s. Overwork, insane commutes (2,400 miles each way), caregiving for an elderly parent, the 7-days-a-week pressures of running a complex business which leaks into one's home life despite every effort to silo it, and so on. I wrote a book about my experiences, Burnout, Reckoning and Renewal, in the hopes that it might help others simply knowing others were sharing their experiences.

What's taboo is to say that the source is the system we inhabit, not our personal inability to manifest god-like powers. The system works fine for the winners who twirl the dials on the narrative control machinery, and they're appalled when they suffer some mild inconvenience when the peasantry doing all the work for them break down and quit.

A tsunami of burnout and quitting, both quiet and loud, is on the horizon, but it's taboo to recognize it or mention it. That the system is broken because it breaks us is the taboo that is frantically enforced at all levels of narrative control.

That's the problem with deploying play-acting as "solutions:" play-acting doesn't actually fix the problems at the source, it simply lets the problems run to failure. The dishes at the banquet of consequences are being served cold because the staff quit: as Johnny Paycheck put it, Take This Job And Shove It.

The peasants don't control the narrative control machinery, and so we ask: cui bono, to whose benefit is the machinery working? The New Nobility, perhaps?

America's Nine Classes: The New Class Hierarchy 4/29/14

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My recent books:

Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases originated via links to Amazon products on this site.

The Mythology of Progress, Anti-Progress and a Mythology for the 21st Century print $18, (Kindle $8.95, Hardcover $24 (215 pages, 2024) Read the Introduction and first chapter for free (PDF)

Self-Reliance in the 21st Century print $18, (Kindle $8.95, audiobook $13.08 (96 pages, 2022) Read the first chapter for free (PDF)

The Asian Heroine Who Seduced Me (Novel) print $10.95, Kindle $6.95 Read an excerpt for free (PDF)

When You Can't Go On: Burnout, Reckoning and Renewal $18 print, $8.95 Kindle ebook; audiobook Read the first section for free (PDF)

Global Crisis, National Renewal: A (Revolutionary) Grand Strategy for the United States (Kindle $9.95, print $24, audiobook) Read Chapter One for free (PDF).

A Hacker's Teleology: Sharing the Wealth of Our Shrinking Planet (Kindle $8.95, print $20, audiobook $17.46) Read the first section for free (PDF).

Will You Be Richer or Poorer?: Profit, Power, and AI in a Traumatized World
(Kindle $5, print $10, audiobook) Read the first section for free (PDF).

The Adventures of the Consulting Philosopher: The Disappearance of Drake (Novel) $4.95 Kindle, $10.95 print); read the first chapters for free (PDF)

Money and Work Unchained $6.95 Kindle, $15 print) Read the first section for free


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High Interest Rates Are Healthy, Low Rates Are Poison

The status quo has it backwards: low rates are now essential to prop up the wreckage left from previous doses of default and cascading losses.

The economy depends on two related drivers: low interest rates and asset bubbles. These two feed back into one another, as low rates / loose credit enables those marginal buyers who otherwise wouldn't qualify to enter the market, generating demand pressure which boosts asset valuations, which then provide more collateral for additional borrowing.

This dynamic is what inflated Housing Bubble #1 in 2003-2007, as mortgage agencies (Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac), private-sector lenders and credit agencies all opened the spigots of loose lending standards and low interest rates to enable marginal buyers--roughly 5% of the entire market of homeowners--to buy homes.

At the other end of the spectrum, those with ready access to credit jumped into marginal development projects to cash in on the bubble inflating. This dynamic worked in a similar fashion: projects that would have been too risky when rates were high and credit was tight were now penciling out as opportunities to cash in on the bubble by selling unbuilt homes in marginal areas to marginal buyers seeking to pyramid their wealth castles of debt.

Since the first house they bought with a 3% down payment loan had soared in value, they could now borrow against that "wealth" / collateral to buy a second spec home, and as that rose in value (even if it wasn't yet finished), they could leverage that gain into a third mortgage / spec house. The developers were minting money as buyers snapped up houses not yet even started.

This low-rates, loose credit bubble burst, as all credit-based bubbles do, with devastating consequences. The Phantom wealth of the bubble vanished, leaving giant craters of default and losses.

Low rates and loose credit are poison that tastes so good we can't stop consuming more. Then the effects kick in, and the emergency measures--bailing out Too Big To Fail lenders and agencies--don't restore the phantom wealth or a healthy economy. Rather, they make the economy dependent on financial fentanyl for its "growth."

High interest rates and tight credit standards force consumers to discipline their financial habits to save money and pay down debt as the only means to increase their creditworthiness. The same discipline is imposed on big-time developers / investors: marginal projects no longer pencil out, and so risky gambles are set aside.

The economy prospers when marginal borrowers doomed to default are excluded and risky ventures doomed to fail are tabled. Low interest rates and loose credit inject default and catastrophic losses into the system, and as these defaults and losses ripple through the tightly bound financial system, they trigger other defaults and losses, forcing financial authorities to reward the losers with bailouts: the profits skimmed from risky lending and investments are private, but the losses fall on the taxpayers and the public.

IN effect, the big players in the casino can go ahead and gamble on high-risk bets, knowing the house will cover their losses. The individuals sucked into margin debt, pyramided debt and risky gambles will be wiped out--no bailout for you--while those that enabled the casino are saved from the consequences of their risky gambles.

The Federal Reserve moved Heaven and Earth to push interest rates near zero and open the credit spigots as the means to "grow the economy." Depending on more poison to treat the previous poisoning is itself a risky gamble. As with real-world fentanyl, whether the dose of financial fentanyl is lethal or not is unknown until it's too late.

High interest rates and tight credit are healthy, low rates and loose credit are sugar-high poison. The status quo has it backwards: low rates are now essential to prop up the wreckage left from previous doses of default and cascading losses.

---

My recent books:

Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases originated via links to Amazon products on this site.

The Mythology of Progress, Anti-Progress and a Mythology for the 21st Century print $18, (Kindle $8.95, Hardcover $24 (215 pages, 2024) Read the Introduction and first chapter for free (PDF)

Self-Reliance in the 21st Century print $18, (Kindle $8.95, audiobook $13.08 (96 pages, 2022) Read the first chapter for free (PDF)

The Asian Heroine Who Seduced Me (Novel) print $10.95, Kindle $6.95 Read an excerpt for free (PDF)

When You Can't Go On: Burnout, Reckoning and Renewal $18 print, $8.95 Kindle ebook; audiobook Read the first section for free (PDF)

Global Crisis, National Renewal: A (Revolutionary) Grand Strategy for the United States (Kindle $9.95, print $24, audiobook) Read Chapter One for free (PDF).

A Hacker's Teleology: Sharing the Wealth of Our Shrinking Planet (Kindle $8.95, print $20, audiobook $17.46) Read the first section for free (PDF).

Will You Be Richer or Poorer?: Profit, Power, and AI in a Traumatized World
(Kindle $5, print $10, audiobook) Read the first section for free (PDF).

The Adventures of the Consulting Philosopher: The Disappearance of Drake (Novel) $4.95 Kindle, $10.95 print); read the first chapters for free (PDF)

Money and Work Unchained $6.95 Kindle, $15 print) Read the first section for free


Become a $3/month patron of my work via patreon.com.

Subscribe to my Substack for free

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The System's Self-Destruct Sequence Cannot Be Turned Off

The artificial hill of pottery shards is puny and localized; the consequences of our system will bring down the system in ways the system is completely blind to.

We're all familiar with the plot device of the self-destruct sequence counting down while our hero / heroine frantically tries to find the kill switch that turns it off. The system--however we choose to describe it--is self-destructing and there's no switch to turn it off.

We're drawn to the notion that cabals and conspiracies are the root source of the system's ills. If these cabals were exposed and disempowered, then the system would quickly right itself and all would be well again.

Cabals and conspiracies are not the source, they're a symptom of a deeper, structural self-destruct mechanism, a mechanism we take for granted as the way the world works.

Regardless of ideological label--capitalist, socialist, communist--all systems are markets of some kind with producers, sellers and buyers / consumers. The market may be more or less open, or more or less controlled by the state, warlords or cartels, but in all cases there are producers, sellers and consumers.

In all cases, neither the producer, the seller nor the consumer have any responsibility for the downstream consequences of what's produced, sold and purchased. Every participant is incentivized to maximize their self-interest without regard for the future consequences of this pursuit of self-interest.

The producer of the plastic bottle has no responsibility for what happens to the bottle after production, the seller has no responsibility for what happens to the bottle after it's sold, and the consumer who tosses it in the river after consuming the contents has no responsibility for what happens to the bottle once they're done consuming the product.

The market has no internal, intrinsic responsibility for the consequences of narrow self-interest nor any mechanism that looks beyond the present. The market is blind to future consequences, and imposes no responsibility to do so on any participant.

The only possible result of this system is self-destruction. Consider the Great Pacific Garbage Gyre, the poetic name for a floating mass of plastic and other waste generated by the "growth at any cost" global economy roughly the size of Texas. (See chart below.) This is not the only garbage patch in the planet's oceans; it's merely one of the biggest.

Who cares about a floating island of garbage? It's harmless, right? Indeed. Can the same be said of the "forever" chemicals, the depleted freshwater aquifers, the mountains of electronic and other waste leaking toxic sludge and the rest of the consequences of a system that is blind to everything but "growth at any cost," self-interest and the eternal Now?

Cabals and conspiracies attract our attention because they are intentionally cloaking the destructive consequences their self-interest is passing on to others. The tobacco cabal worked diligently for decades to obfuscate the deadly consequences of smoking, as the means of maximizing their profits / self-interest.

So let's identify the cabal that intentionally created the Great Pacific Garbage Gyre to further their self-interest. Do we finger the producers of the 300 million tons of plastics produced annually, or the corporations that sold the 300 million tons of plastics, or the consumers who bought the 300 million tons of plastics?

The waste stream is generated by the system, not a cabal, and the system is constructed of values and what I call the mythology of Progress, a mythology of make-believe and play-acting, in which we watch a video of a group recycling a tiny sliver of the waste generated by global tourism and then declare, "See? Technology is solving the problems created by the system! No worries, it will all get solved by new technologies."

Absolved by this magical-thinking, we're free to continue pursuing our part of consequence-free "growth at any cost." This is the internal logic of the market-system, and it operates the same under any ideological label.

In theory, political rulers are supposed to the future consequences, but rulers only rule by authority granted in the present moment. If their supporters are forced to sacrifice for some distant benefit, they will find someone else to support.

Every civilization that produces "forever" goods ends up creating mountains of waste. Broken pottery shards pile up into artificial hills. But the scale of the modern system is so colossal that the consequences are now planetary, affecting our health and complex systems we don't fully understand, much less control. The artificial hill of pottery shards is puny and localized; the consequences of our system will bring down the system in ways the system is completely blind to.

Even if technology consolidated the Great Pacific Garbage Gyre at enormous expense, what would we do with the artificial garbage island? And since the system spews out 300 million tons of new plastic every year, a new Great Pacific Garbage Gyre will soon form.

There is no "off" switch on the system's self-destruct sequence. We'll only notice, or care, when the system started breaking down under the crushing weight of the consequences that have been piling up and ignored with play-acting solutions such as recycling.




New podcast: Seeking a Culture of Honor and Integrity with Emerson Fersch and Amy LeNoble (59 min)

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