A Contrarian Clarification of "Free Speech"

A social media company has the right to decline publishing my opinion, but the government's ability to restrict what the social media company publishes is restricted by the First Amendment.

We all know what "free speech" means: it's our right to say whatever we want, whenever we want, wherever we want, as long as we're not libeling someone. Well, actually, no, that's not what "free speech" means. Here's the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

For an overview of the immense body of jurisprudence regarding the limits of "free speech," here's a good place to start: First Amendment Fundamental Freedoms Analysis and Interpretation of the U.S. Constitution.

In essence, the first amendment prohibits the federal government from "abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press," in other words, censorship. The Founders were seeking to limit the powers of the state to restrict pushback from the citizenry against state policies or decisions.

But this doesn't mean "everything is protected as 'free speech.'" For example, a drunk in a bar who shouts, "You're worthless, you suck!" at other patrons is not protected by the First Amendment.

"In Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, the Supreme Court unanimously sustained a conviction under a state law proscribing any 'offensive, derisive or annoying word addressed to any person in a public place'... 'the use in a public place of words likely to cause a breach of the peace,' words 'by their very utterance, inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace. Accordingly, such utterances are no essential part of any exposition of ideas, and are of such slight social value as a step to truth that any benefit that may be derived from them is clearly outweighed by the social interest in order and morality.'"

Yet by some strange bewitchment, the "right" to shout "You're worthless, you suck!" online is now considered "protected" as "free speech." As the Court clearly stated, "free speech" is intended to protect an exposition of ideas as a step to truth, not content-free abuse.

The First Amendment does not obligate privately owned media to provide a forum for everyone to shout "You're worthless, you suck!" If the drunk wanders from the bar to the Heritage Foundation and demands they publish his "opinion," the Foundation is under no obligation to comply.

The newspaper is not obligated to print the drunk's "letter to the editor," nor is the radio station or TV network obligated to provide a forum for his "opinion."

On occasion a reader expresses discontent that I don't have a "comments forum" on my website, on the presumption that everyone paying to host a website is somehow obligated to also pay the expenses so everyone else can use their privately funded site as a public forum for their opinions.

What the First Amendment says is that government cannot restrict anyone from hosting a website, though what they post publicly is subject to Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire. Other cases reflect the Court's view that the issue with "free speech" is government actions that restrict free speech, not the right of privately owned enterprises to choose what they publish / post publicly.

My response to those expecting that a privately funded "forum" for their "opinion" is a "right": pay for your own server / website and then you can post whatever opinions you wish to. That's the limit of free speech: you're free to carry a sign in public places (with certain restrictions), publish your own newspaper, start your own website or media platform, or give speeches from soapboxes, but nothing obligates a media corporation to publish your "opinion" or provide an unrestricted forum for everyone's opinions.

In other words, a social media company has the right to decline publishing my opinion, but the government's ability to restrict what the social media company publishes is restricted by the First Amendment.

What obscures this distinction is the Big Tech platform's profit-driven fear of alienating the users they're trying to addict by clarifying what their "community standards" actually mean. It would be refreshing if social media / search platforms stated what they consider acceptable and unacceptable in clear, simple terms.

For example, "the owners and management of this site hold values generally described as (progressive, conservative, libertarian, etc.) and we have the right to decline to publish opinion and content that conflicts with our values." At least the political reality would be in plain sight rather than being cloaked by phony claims of neutrality.

It would be refreshing if a Big Tech corporation stated, "We retain the right to judge whether a comment or post offers an exposition of ideas as a step to truth or is content-free opinion of slight social value" instead of pandering to the claim that they're pursuing "free speech" rather than "free enterprise," an enterprise enriched by shouting "You're worthless, you suck!" as often as possible, to spur "engagement."

What the First Amendment clearly restricts is government censorship by proxy, that is, government "requesting" social media corporations limit what is posted based on standards selected not by the owners but by the government. I often complain about being shadow-banned, but what I'm complaining about is not the right of these platforms to refuse to publish my content; that is their right, just as it's my right to refuse to provide a public forum for everyone else to post their opinion.

What I object to is the mealy-mouthed, cowardly way the media giants hide their guidelines, out of fear of reducing their precious profits. But the First Amendment doesn't require media corporations to state their guidelines. Newspapers have the right to decline to publish opinions submitted by readers that the editors disagree with or don't want to promote, and there's no obligation for them to explain every refusal.

If we disagree with the media company's decision, then our "right to free speech" boils down to peaceful public protests or starting our own newspaper / website / platform / radio station / channel.

The concentration of media is another issue: there are negative social consequences of monopolies and cartels dominating media platforms. But that's a topic for a future essay.

---

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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All The World's a Stage: Everything Is Fake

No wonder we're restless, teetering on the edge, frustrated by our addictions to fakery and excess, starved for what cannot be marketed or made profitable, so it no longer exists except in the shadows.

Everything is staged, and therefore fake. Given the near-zero cost of posting content in the digital world, everyone discovered that staging wasn't limited to high-end political events, parades and Hollywood sets; since all the world's a stage, everything could be staged, from every selfie on social media to every video on YouTube to every public display.

With staging comes spectacle, with spectacle comes self-serving artifice, and with artifice comes excess. The captivating idea of staging is by mimicking authenticity, we manifest an implicitly self-serving purpose: we stage the film to mimic "real life" to entertain the audience, and by this means reap a fortune.

By staging a political event, we rouse blood lust to serve our ascension to power. By staging a selfie in a swank bar sipping a costly cocktail, while home is a shared room in a squalid, overpriced flat, we serve our desire for a digitally distributed simulacrum of a status we cannot possibly achieve in our real lives.

Now that everything is staged, the competition to get noticed in a sea frothing with endless scrolls of "content" demands excess. Everything is now so sensationalized that we are desensitized to it all. As a result, everything distills down to self-parody, rendering parody impossible, for everything is already a parody of itself.

Mimicking authenticity to make the sale is now so embedded, so ubiquitous, that irony is also lost: we are living in a Philip K. Dick story come to life in which young women fabricating fake lives of glamor and luxury to boost their visibility are now competing with digitized imaginary young women that are idealized versions of the sexually compelling female.

Now that engagement is the coin of the Attention Economy realm, traditional media and social media have merged: everybody's competing for engagement because that's everyone's source of income. Never mind that the Big Tech platforms skim the bulk of the engagement revenues and a handful of influencers reap the majority of what's left; the mob is furiously dedicated to the task of picking up the pennies scattered in the sand-covered floor of the Coliseum.

In my view, engagement is the polite term for addiction, the core value proposition in Addiction Capitalism. As every dealer knows, there's no more reliable source of revenue than a junkie with a monkey on his back, and encouraging addiction to screens is astoundingly profitable.

The fevered competition for eyeballs / visibility has generated a self-reinforcing feedback of faking authenticity better than other spectacles. The goal isn't to present "real life," what would be the point of such absurdly uncompelling, boring anti-spectacle?

The goal is to stage the mise en scene so cleverly that it really looks real: the rural kitchen in all its handmade glory, the "real food" lovingly prepared with simple tools, or the high-wire emotions of the indignant, filled to the brim with passionate intensity, planning their role when the rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches towards Bethlehem to be born.

But authenticity cannot be profitably milked for long; we caught on long ago. The transformation into sensationalized, self-parodying staging makes a mockery of authenticity, and as everyone crowds onto the world stage seeking visibility and the money the right staging brings, authenticity dissipates into dark energy, present but invisible, undetectable, a fleeting shadow lost in the churning wake of spectacle.

French philosopher Guy Debord's 1967 book, The Society of the Spectacle, sheds light on this transformation. (This is a PDF of the entire text.) "The vague feeling that there has been a rapid invasion which has forced people to lead their lives in an entirely different way is now widespread; but this is experienced rather like some inexplicable change in the climate, or in some other natural equilibrium, a change faced with which ignorance knows only that it has nothing to say."

This reminds me of a comment French writer Michel Houellebecq made in an interview: "I have the impression of being caught up in a network of complicated, minute, stupid rules, and I have the impression of being herded towards a uniform kind of happiness, toward a kind of happiness that doesn't really make me happy."

The ceaseless staging and spectacles have deranged us. The mood of the mob is fast becoming ugly; even the victors of the staged games are being booed. The attention span of the audience has dwindled to the point that few even wait for the outcome of the contest to scream for somebody's blood. The crowd is no longer satiated by gore or drama, and even the comedic interludes no longer mask the sense that the mob is one spark away from taking their rage and frustration out on each other--the vicarious thrills are no longer enough.

This is the fruit of relying on fakery, of believing that no one can tell the difference between authenticity and staged simulacra. The audience craves something real, and what's served up as "real" is just another self-serving mise en scene. No wonder we're restless, teetering on the edge, frustrated by our addictions to fakery and excess, starved for what cannot be marketed or made profitable, so it no longer exists except in the shadows.

---

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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NOTE: Contributions/subscriptions are acknowledged in the order received. Your name and email remain confidential and will not be given to any other individual, company or agency.

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17 Indicators of Global Recession Are Clanging

The smart money is selling, of course, for the clanging indicators are the dinner bell announcing the banquet of consequences has been served, and Nemesis doesn't want the meal to get cold.

Correspondent Wilson R. Logan kindly shared his list of 17 indicators of globally synchronized recession. In my view, each is an alarm bell clanging loudly. As Wilson put it, "recessions have vey clear indicators. We've all known it was coming and we've all had a long time to think about it."

For context, recall that the global economy is a tightly bound, highly integrated system, which means disruptions in one subsystem quickly ripple though the entire system. Disruptions tend to amplify one another, creating a cascading effect much like an avalanche: everything looks perfectly stable until the entire mountainside gives way.

This isn't presented as a complete list of indicators; there are a multitude of others. But this is certainly a comprehensive start.

Here are Logan's 17 indicators of global recession:

1) Tighter credit conditions. Banks see the recession coming and start to build a cash cushion, hoard liquidity, de-risk portfolios (the lessons of Bear Sterns).

2) Increasing REPO fails.

3) Volatility in the Japanese Bills market.

4) Near Term Forward Spread inversion.

5) Swap Spread Compression.

6) Term SOFR & EURIBOR calendar spread inversion.

7) 2-10 yield curve inversion.

8) Hours worked, total compensation falling.

9) Falling oil prices.

10) Factory gate prices falling.

11) ISM survey negative sentiment.

12) UofM consumer sentiment survey negative.

13) Increasing credit card debt.

14) Contango in the WTI Futures curve.

15) Falling value of loans to non-financial corporations (NFCs) (see 1).

16) Diverging GDP & GNI.

17) Labor hoarding.

(CHS note: for example, in Japan, if you want to quit your wretched, low-pay, abusive-boss job, you have to find a replacement first: 'They refused to let me go': Japanese workers turn to resignation agencies to quit jobs.)

Thank you, Wilson, for sharing your comprehensive list of global recession indicators. For additional context, let's turn to two charts.

The first is my inverted pyramid of debt and disposable earnings. This relationship between the cost of servicing debt and how much money is left after paying essential expenses (food, utilities, shelter, etc. or the costs of production) is scale-invariant, meaning it works the same for individuals, households, small businesses, global corporations and nation-states.

If the earnings left after paying essential expenses declines while the debt and cost of servicing the debt rise, the entity goes bust and collapses in a heap. For households, as inflation stripmines the purchasing power of their earnings, they increasingly turn to debt to fill the gap between the cash that's available to spend and what they desire to spend.

When interest rates are falling or near-zero, adding debt appears sustainable. But should interest rates rise, the debt quickly become untenable.



So-called Zombie Corporations have one neat trick to stay alive despite their decaying financials: they roll over their higher-interest debt into a larger, lower-interest debt. Since the sum needed to service the debt remains the same, they can go on their merry way until the next refinancing replenishes their cash-burn.

This is all very jolly until banks refuse to loan them more money, and interest rates rise. Again, this is scale-invariant: as long as the consumer can tap another credit card, the corporation can roll over its debt at lower rates, nations can sell more Treasury bonds, then all is well.

But once credit tightens and rates rise, the dynamic reverses, and bankruptcy is the only "solution" left. Insolvency and writing off all debt is a solution for the borrower/debtor, of course, but a catastrophe for the lender / investor, who receives pennies on the dollar, the rest being a complete and total loss of assets / wealth.

Next, let's turn to the "impossible," i.e. bubbles popping with extreme prejudice. How do we know a bubble is a bubble? If the deflation of the bubble is declared "impossible." For example, today's global Everything Bubble. Yes, yes, the Everything Bubble cannot possibly pop with extreme prejudice, it will expand forever because (insert Fed Put, AI, Martian Central Bank quatloos, etc.).

History has a peculiar, disconcerting disregard for "likes," opinions and projections of infinite growth, and so it's clear that all bubbles pop. Bubbles pop with an eerie symmetry, falling at roughly the same time scale and rate as their ascent. Thus we can project the collapse of the Everything Bubble with some certitude.



Or we can dismiss the 17 indicators clanging loudly and base our confidence on eternal expansion of everything on the Fed Put, AI, or Martian Central Bank quatloos. Pretty much anything will do; all that matters is that a permanently high plateau of overvaluation and financial fantasy is presented as inevitable.

The smart money is selling, of course, for the clanging indicators are the dinner bell announcing the banquet of consequences has been served, and Nemesis doesn't want the meal to get cold.

---

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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NOTE: Contributions/subscriptions are acknowledged in the order received. Your name and email remain confidential and will not be given to any other individual, company or agency.

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Isn't It Obvious?

And so here we are, exhausted by the divisions, the frustration, the rage and our loneliness in a sea of madness few even see.

Isn't it obvious? Of course it is. So what's obvious? That there are sharply different views on what's obvious.

Psychiatrist-author R.D. Laing noted back in 1967 as the Vietnam War raged that what was obvious to President Lyndon Johnson--that the war had to be prosecuted lest the Democratic party lose congressional seats in the 1968 election for being "soft on Communism"--was not obvious to those paying the price of the war as the collateral damage for the all-important political jockeying in Washington D.C.

As historian Peter Turchin has documented, the cycle of socio-economic-political disintegration-integration runs around fifty years, and so here we are. Turchin caught some flak for predicting the handbasket would start its slide into Heck in 2020, and voila.

A great many things are obvious, yet equally obvious is the chasm separating what's obvious to each of us. The chasm is literally bottomless, and there are no bridges across it, no common ground, and so friendships--the glue of sociability, the foundation of our well-being--are tossed into the chasm with infuriated abandon--how dare you!

Having lived through the last cycle of tumult, discord and disintegration, that we're in another such cycle is obvious to me, but not to others. That the end of the Debt-Speculation Super-Cycle is upon us is obvious to many of us, but hotly denied by the multitudes counting on The Everything Bubble never popping.

That mass media and social media have merged is obvious to me, but not to others. The source of income for all media players / content creators is now the same, and so the competition for "engagement" (i.e. attention, eyeballs, emotional vesting) is Darwinian on a heretofore unimaginable scale, a power-law scale in which the few winners at the very apex collect the vast majority of the winnings and the 99% trail off in the long tail, collecting the coins that roll off the table of the few.

By way of example, data collected by the Department of Justice on the 58,000 books published in a year revealed that 96% of books sell less than 1,000 copies, and 50 percent of all titles sold less than a dozen copies. (Source.) That's one heck of a long tail: 30,000 books--most infused with the hopes and dreams of the authors--each sold 12 or less copies.

This aligns with the Pareto Distribution, the 80/20 rule, which distills down (80% of 80% = 64% and 20% of 20% = 4%) to the 64/4 rule: the top 4% scoop up two-thirds of the winnings, and the 96% brawl over the remaining third.

In social media, as in the rest of the economy, the percentages are even less favorable: the top 0.1% amass the vast majority of the gains. The top influencers rake in millions, the selfie-posting multitudes pick up pennies--if they're lucky.

So what are the tools needed to win this Darwinian competition? Addiction, clickbait, emotional lassos and echo chambers: make the devices and endless scrolling addictive: you're a winner. Feature sensationalized clickbait headlines: you're a winner. Snare the unwary with emotional lassos: you're a winner. Espouse shared beliefs to fellow true believers with ecstatic enthusiasm: you're a winner.

So isn't it obvious where this is going? Put another way: is this savage arena a healthy environment? Or is it deranging to all who wander in and are lassoed with such ease? What happens to those lassoed, addicted, ensnared? This chart of loneliness illuminates the inevitable result of making derangement the most profitable activity under the sun.



As others have insightfully pointed out, every individual who tries to walk past the arena has 100,000 well-paid, smart, highly motivated hawkers cajoling them into enter the arena. Hey pal, craving a dopamine hit? Come on in, we got dopamine hits galore inside. You're gonna love it.

And so here we are, exhausted by the divisions, the frustration, the rage and our loneliness in a sea of madness few even see. Fortunately, I have the perfect antidote for you: click here, and you'll be delighted by an endless scroll of adorable kids playing with puppies and kittens. Your dopamine levels are going to low-Earth orbit, you're gonna love it.

Or if you have super-human powers, walk past the arena and keep walking.

---

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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NOTE: Contributions/subscriptions are acknowledged in the order received. Your name and email remain confidential and will not be given to any other individual, company or agency.

Thank you, Emmanuel G. ($70), for your superbly generous subscription to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.		Thank you, DrWah ($7/month), for your magnificently generous subscription to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.

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We're Told This Is Progress, But It's Actually Anti-Progress

We need a new definition of Progress, and a reset of the mythology guiding our descent into "Anti-Progress".

There's a curious disconnect between our glorification of Technological Progress and our real-world experience. If we step outside the tent of relentless propaganda touting science-fiction fantasies come to life--permanent bases on the Moon, limitless energy from fusion, etc.--we find that rather than everyday life getting better--the core meaning of Progress--we find that everyday life is getting harder. I call this Anti-Progress--the opposite of Progress.

Buried beneath the thrills of science-fiction fantasies come to life, real life is characterized by the accelerating descent into Anti-Progress.

Consider a raw carrot. In the current system of Progress, the most important feature of a raw carrot is its low profitability. There is little that promotion, branding or "innovation" can do to persuade consumers to pay more for a raw carrot.

The most important feature of a raw carrot to the human body is that it is a natural food packed with nutrients and fiber. It is easy to store and transport and can be eaten raw or cooked. It can be eaten alone or mixed into stews, soups, salads and casseroles. A raw carrot is a healthy snack.

None of this overcomes its terrible, unfixable flaw: it doesn't lend itself to Progress, i.e. boosting profits. The Progress solution to this inherent flaw is to process the carrot into a product that can be marketed as an advance (i.e. Progress) in convenience, novelty, status and engagement (i.e. dopamine rush / addiction), attributes the consumer will pay more for.

A few shreds of the carrot are cooked into mush and added to a concoction of potato starch, sugar and low-quality fat that is dyed with artificial colors to match a carrot's color and marketed as a "veggie snack" ("contains real carrots!").

The nutritional value of the product is nil and the health consequences of consuming what is basically a greasy sugary confection are negative. The list of chronic diseases incurred by a diet of such highly processed food is long.

This engineered snack, deceptively marketed as "veggie" to deceive parents into assuming it is a "healthy snack," is immensely profitable, and so the system cheers the soaring sales and profits.

The engagement/addiction aspect of this product is especially pernicious, as it is specifically designed to hijack the human brain's reward centers much like a powerful drug. Its mouthfeel and heavy doses of sugar, salt and fat activate our hard-wired predilection for what is scarce in the hunter-gatherer diet: salt, fats and sweets. Eating this snack generates an immediate reward: a pleasurable dopamine rush. Bet you can't just have one.

Not only is this confection devoid of nutrition, it's designed to be addictive. As every drug dealer knows, there's nothing more profitable than an addiction that generates reliable demand.

This describes not just addictive drugs and processed foods; it describes the whole of consumerism, which carefully cultivates addiction as the defining dynamic not just of Progress but of every-day life.

Should any consumers lodge a complaint about the deceptively advertised "veggie snack" with the agencies tasked with protecting public health, they will find the corporate lobbyists have neutered public influence by spending whatever sums of money are needed to buy the compliance of regulators, what's known as regulatory capture.

The product is declared safe and anyone complaining about the deceptive packaging is told that it's up to consumers to choose what to buy or not buy: caveat emptor, buyer beware.

This process of boosting profits by masking the negative consequences is not just rational in the system of Progress, it's the only path: any CEO who chooses not to maximize profits and buy political influence is fired for incompetence.

This reveals the pathological nature of organizing an economy and society around promoting a mythology that equates expanding consumption with Progress.

Anyone who describes the system as it truly is must be marginalized with an accusation of violating the American taboo against negativity. Not finding a silver lining is an unforgiveable sin: just as you must cheer technological Progress, you must be relentlessly positive. An entire library of cheery slogans is at the ready to ensure the proper dose of positive spirit has been administered, no matter how insincerely. If life gives you lemons, make lemonade.

So when we move to the response to the diseases generated by a diet of addictive processed foods--the immensely profitable market for pharmaceuticals that alleviate the symptoms of the diseases caused by consuming processed foods--we find a happy marriage of profits reaped by generating lifestyle diseases and an equally profitable alleviation of symptoms.

There are numerous subsidiary winners in this Anti-Progress profit bonanza: university research funded by corporate interests, lobbying firms handsomely paid to dig regulatory moats, politicians harvesting campaign contributions, think-tanks paid to distribute the apologists' favorite cover-story, "the free market," speculators scheming to cash in on a heavily hyped initial public offering (IPO), and so on.

Once we tune in to the siren songs of Progress, we hear them everywhere. The smart phone is a wonder, for what could be better than having shopping, hyper-addictive games and social media at our fingertips, an addictive device that enables access to a wealth of other addictions?

Just as the consequences of consuming the "veggie snack" are hidden, so are the consequences of glorifying addictive technologies as Progress.

Healthy human life is constructed of relationships between individuals, families, communities, the natural world and the moral universe.

Our economic system of Progress severs all these links as impediments to expanding consumption and profits via addiction, obsolescence, insecurity and narcissism. From the perspective of a healthy human life, these are the perfection of Anti-Progress.

How can soaring rates of diabetes and prediabetes be Progress? Clearly, this is Anti-Progress.



How can soaring rates of disability be Progress? Clearly, this is Anti-Progress.



How can soaring rates of metabolic disorders be Progress? Clearly, this is Anti-Progress.



How can soaring costs of basic healthcare insurance be Progress? Clearly, this is Anti-Progress.



How can soaring rates of teen depression be Progress? Clearly, this is Anti-Progress.



How can increasing loneliness be Progress? Clearly, this is Anti-Progress.



While returning to the Moon and AI apps are touted as "proof" of Progress, real-world life is most accurately described as snowballing Anti-Progress. We need a new definition of Progress, and a reset of the mythology guiding our descent into Anti-Progress. That's the topic of my new book, The Mythology of Progress, Anti-Progress and a Mythology for the 21st Century.

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My recent books:

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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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