In our society,
It is capitalism
And capitalism did provide rapidly expanding systemic providence, there is no doubt we came up.
Producing goods and services where proprietors make choices that drive innovation and keep generating revenue.
But what happens, and pertains to EROI,
Is that the actual underlying life force or energy that drives this capitalist success,
Thins out once the society population blows up but the earth’s energy resources remain finite and the supply of arable and liveable land remains finite, and the overhead costs of increasing social complexity rise against the proportion of providence.
But capitalism does not stop. Instead it evolves into increasingly cannibalistic behaviors and behaviors that long since stop providing material access to the population at large, and start instead creating a financial vacuum for more and more families
The income provided by capitalism increasingly fails to sustain the material lot of the family,
Because that failure to sustain is the inevitable thermodynamic expression where the engine of society cannot sustain itself
And what will surprise most everyday people, is that for the most part, the elites do not really possess this missing energy. They merely possess more claims to the gravely strained pool of energy.
If you took all the wealth of the elites and spread it among the people, there would be some relief for a little while. In fact some reinvestment into society like non-market housing NEEDS to be deployed to at least allow people to have a place to hang their hat while we are in decline.
But even doing so, the wealth of the elites is mostly CLAIMS on the existing, and tightening, supply of energy and resources. The resources of energy and land are contracting per capita regardless and this is being expressed by corporate structures tightening more and more and benefits for everyday people becoming increasingly worthless. Then more and more “jobs” stop protecting your rights, skirt the beaurocratic wage and protection laws of yesterday (since they became too complex and expensive), and largely this contraction comes down on the majority of citizens before it begins seriously affecting the elite. But it eventually will affect everyone. Moral panics and scapegoating will fail to resolve this thermodynamic tightening, and action to reinvest some basic essentials into society by non market housing deployment is likely the simplest and most immediate form of relief.
What is bewildering to me isn’t that this is happening. It’s thermodynamically realistic. What is bewildering is that culture is seriously lagging in updating its own expectations and ideology despite the state of affairs becoming increasingly difficult for so many, especially as it pertains to realizing once-assumed material and autonomy standards.
One personal example of bewildering economic indignation is this; modern music production technology has allowed me to apply my artistic and musical talent to produce a massive music catalog that would sonically make Prince blush. Coming from a background of binging on pop music my whole life, I know enough and have the ear to know that my bangers slap. But despite slapping, society still regards me as having no or even negative value. And most people do not respect the music merely because I don’t have money or tastemakers backing it, you don’t even need money backing it for it to exist. To produce what I produced back in year 2000 would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars in equipment and studio time and no doubt come with cultural validation, prestige and unimaginable material luxury. But today I produced, without generative AI, the same amazing kind of sonic experience once relegated to cultural titans, yet I have only earned $10, and may still eventualy become homeless. Because life has changed that much. I didn’t even use AI.