Political and Economic Organization
An ecology of social systems
Wednesday, September 19th, 2018This essay consists of a condensation of insights from Heinberg’s three-part article, “Human Predators, Human Prey”, and a partial reinterpretation.
Two types of hierarchical relations are evident in ecosystemic predator/prey relations :
Functional as in population regulation, a problem-solving relation that benefits the entire ecosystem as predators keep prey populations in check throughout the ecosystem food [...]
The Peasants Shall Inherit the Earth
Thursday, August 30th, 2018It is said that prediction is difficult, especially about the future. Nonetheless, a few Romans saw the inevitable fall of the Roman Empire more than a hundred years before it completely disappeared. Their prediction was possible because they saw that the system was depleting resources essential to its survival, so had trapped itself into a [...]
How the Maximum Power Principle affects living systems
Wednesday, November 22nd, 2017I make no claim to expertise on the subject, but here is how I understand it. The laws of thermodynamics are central for understanding how the universe operates. One of the aspects of the second law is that gradients of energy or matter will try to eliminate themselves. This is important because of all the [...]
Scenarios on the Downslope: Insights from Greer’s The Ecotechnic Future
Sunday, September 17th, 2017Perhaps the hardest truth for modern society on the edge of industrial decline is to learn our species’ dependence, like other species, ultimately on natural laws, not human ones. The learning process has many layers, partly because it involves a revolution that takes us beyond reductionism to seeing reality in a more systemic and historical [...]
What Is the Deep State?
Tuesday, August 22nd, 2017Recently the idea that there exists some shadowy group called the deep state has begun to edge its way into the alternative news media, and occasionally into public discourse in the US. I see two major reasons for this. One is that people in power, whoever they are, fearing the declining public credibility in major [...]
The struggle to integrate social and ecological science: its critical importance to the future of human society
Sunday, September 4th, 2016I initially began this essay to make a case to the scientific community for a revision in the way science is done. However, I believe the issues and the arguments herein to be of such importance for the future of humanity that I tried to make it readable for the general public as well. If [...]
Humans Have Energetically Overpowered the Earth
Monday, September 7th, 2015All life depends on constant consumption of energy. Nothing happens without it. More energy, more stuff happens: goods, services, population, raw materials depletion, pollution, damage to soil, water and other ecosystem processes that are essential to all life, including humanity. Less energy, less of all of the above. For most of several billion years of [...]
Forces Driving the US Political Economy
Monday, May 4th, 2015The Crutches and the Consequences
Since the 1970s US economic growth has slowed, resulting in a declining standard of living for the majority in the lower classes. The decline in material standard in the US would be far worse but was artificially propped up in several ways.
First, we allowed foreign imports to replace our industrial production, [...]
High Level Rats Who Bail from the Rat Race: Disillusioned Conservative Cabinet Level and Financial Class Insiders
Sunday, March 1st, 2015There exists a long history and literature of criticism of the modern social system based on the concentrated wealth and power of private capital. Most of the critics are writing from outside the centers of power. What is new is the radical rejection of the system now voiced by people with long careers high enough [...]
What is Fascism?
Tuesday, September 30th, 2014Who cares what fascism is? We in the US should, because elements of it are creeping into our society, activated on an as-needed basis at present to keep its development somewhat below the radar of the masses. Because the term is so often misused, here I will summarize a relatively rigorous conception of fascism like [...]
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