Can a large scale organization of humans even become sustainable?

Let's wrestle this down to a historical perspective.

Humans on this planet have never achieved long term sustainability.  Gulp. That's right, we have formed big groups... like ancient Egypt, the Inca Empire, the Edo Period and Nabatean civilizations but guess what?  They all collapsed and for different reasons.. So let's contemplate the assist we are enjoying by copious abundant feedstocks of energy and how those who came before us still managed to reach an apex without that gift and still collapsed.  What about our enormous energy overhang and billions of people with no real survivability skills? Worlds biggest correction will happen - maybe in a generation, maybe sooner if knuckle headed decisions are made.

Historians cite, environmental exploitation, overshoot, complexity and the lack of long term planning to adapt to the plethora of threats out there.  

So when we speak of sustainable anything are we really projecting wishful thinking - just in ignorant proclamation in defiance of our history or maybe a carefully chosen marketing trope. It sounds great to investors even if it isn't possible.  PT Barnum would be proud.

Sustainable isn't the same as survivable, or adaptable and many small, independent and geographically lucky in history tend to evolve.  But a planetary sustainable culture?  Never has happened so perhaps the strategy should be reductionist, independent and organic in concept and execution. Small, resourceful and peaceful wouldn't hurt either.  Circular economies, purpose driven innovation and the ending of wasteful diversions of talent and energy seem like great ideas to explore.  Seems like financialization has to go away too - but that's just my view of things.

Just something to think about when the rubber finally hits the road. Sustainability is simply - a canard. It's a little bit of Edward Bernays scammery mixed in with that irresistible financialization addiction the West loves. Adaptability and survivability actually mean something.  That's where we need to focus our thoughts, and we should change (correct) the language as best as we can.

How sustaining are energy dependent institutional policies?

 Like many things that are obvious that we learn in our life's walk, lack of any given resource forces us to adapt, do without or simply discard an old way.  The same is true for digitally based methods we now accept or foresee as having an indispensable role in our world view or how we envision life to be.

So things like digital currency will most certainly become a reality, but how sustainable is that? Full surveillance money or programmable “social credit” wallets probably will have a short life in human history. Policy surrounding these advances is increasingly shaped by data modeling, risk management and so called experts with their biased algorithms intended to drive profits for somebody, which after all are programmed by people with that agenda.  All of these massively energy dependent initiatives are underpinned by carefully selected bureaucratic incompetence which makes life easy for the lobbyist.  Looks like a bumpy road to go down with an eventual end that is unsustainable do to energy allocation or depletion over time.  

So get ready for more economic strain, institutional decay as governments continue to run on emergency bylaws, opaque technological creep, political polarization and general instability that comes from no clearly enunciated direction. What the Chinese call "Interesting Times." 

If you assume, governments lie most of the time,  multinational corporations act in self-interest and media always filters reality to their handlers approval... you’re being realistic and maybe just a bit better aware than the average person. So don't expect to become informed that way. After all, the "news" is a for profit entertainment show staffed with actors reading story lines they really have no idea of any depth. Checkers not chess, commercials and lots of smiles.

So what can YOU do? Be vigilante and try to protect what gets measured because that's what becomes what matters - at least in public discourse and through your democratic processes.  The unpleasant stuff that isn’t measured gets ignored.  Maybe it needs to be.  

Watch for politicians and influencers of any stripe that all come from similar schools, share assumptions, circulate through the same institutions and most importantly, review and validate each other. It is easy to spot this kind of short sightedness or group incompetence or dare I say it "corruption"... be looking for stuff like dissent being labeled “uninformed” rather than a valid democratic mechanism. Watch out for credentials replacing accountability and policy that  shields the expert class from accountability for propagating a false narrative.  In this miasma status insulation is enough to start the downward civic rotation.

Once a system gets built around a comfy clan, careers depend on it staying that way, getting funding depends on allegiance to it, and institutions grow to depend on it. So - hard to correct large corrupt systems because they have a self preservation protective posture.  When reality diverges from the narrative, data can always be reinterpreted, assumptions can be quietly adjusted, and as always, critics are framed as lunatics.  LOL, so corruption is epistemic, not just financial. 

(Epistemic corruption is the breakdown of a knowledge systems integrity where it becomes unreliable for its intended purpose due to manipulation from external interests. 

This occurs when systems for producing or disseminating knowledge are co-opted by motives like financial gain, political power, or career advancement, which are at odds with their core goals.) 

Popular examples include how the pharmaceutical industry can corrupt medical science through funding and product-defense science can skew climate research. 

We are, I am afraid reaching a point where we experience highly complicated (complexity) regulation, mostly compiled by financial industry lobbyists, this new energy hungry world requires expertise to navigate and favors the insider EVERY time. This will, again I am observing, allow for corporations to influence public policy rules whilst public influence weakens if you don't participate in making your voice heard.  This can look like a neutral system when in fact it can become the mythical wolf in sheep's clothing. Surrogate endpoints instead of real-world outcomes seem to be the only reported news. The public can feel unheard and without a mechanism to instigate democratic change. But don't give up on your democratic processes.  

This can be an abrogation by policy optimization of what’s easiest to measure as defined by somebody else's metrics rather than the voting public. So keep informed, vote and write a letter or two.  Those people who create complexity make a ton of money on adventures that don't have to make any sense at all.  Why should they care as long as the money comes in. There is a shocking reality by the way, but I digress.

Expert class insulation seems to be growing as buying the right credentialed expert is offered as dismissal to the public forum.  So these days, opinion can become science (not the scientific method) and questioning can become mis-information. So we now have status insulation NOT scientific discourse.  Know the difference.

Lastly, the inequality and resulting harms we now see have largely been reframed as “acceptable tradeoffs”, abetted by careers, grants of money, and built reputations that depend on systems which if questioned or abandoned would lead to professional $uicide for the influencer.  So don't look for a lot of internal reform anywhere a paycheck is based on keeping a head down!    

We didn't need a grand conspiracy, or evil actors or even secret meetings to get here - but all of that does/did help.  Transparency is a strong antidote to corruption and we need more of it. What we do have are systems that incentivize blindly following a narrative, we have baked in career monetary pressure to advancement, risk aversion of reprisal on an individual level and the centralization of expertise from the approved "chosen" pool of "smart people" which makes change even harder as first the incumbent rhetoric has to dismantled. All of this while the media is largely co-opted.  The systems we have created self select for conformity, keep a cloak of secrecy over motives and tend to filter out the unabashed truth-tellers, even when everyone believes they’re acting ethically.  These absurdities grew from an energy rich world, and allowed the squandering of talent and resources. In a lean mean, no room for BS world they would not have blossomed to this magnus opus.  

So energy and the policies that surround its distribution are as complicated as anything else.  Keep informed, share your thoughts, work for a better tomorrow.  Failure to grasp the significance or even create university degrees in adaptive anthropology or survivability technology dont exist, perhaps they should. Wouldn't it be amazing to see a debate on energy policy based on research in these areas?  

The game of musical chairs is progressing...

Let's do a thought exercise.  If you had a friend who was temporarily out of work you wouldn't think twice about lending a hand.  It's the right thing to do unless you are a sociopath and take delight at others misfortunes - don't laugh, there are many out there.  Now let's complicate the story. Let's say your friend lost their job because the factory they worked at went bankrupt and  the unemployment in that friends little town went through the roof.   (When the full impact of automating service jobs with expert systems - some call it AI - millions will be jobless and very soon).  That person still needs a hand, so you probably would help out. But as the days turned to months and the months to years how long would you help out before you might expect that friend to maybe relocate to where there were jobs and life could go on.  Or would you say to yourself "I'm gonna support my old friend until I can't anymore?"  Perhaps you would vote for a universal standard income and just accept the taxation that reduces your standard of living?

Let us now look at the retracting energy resources around the world.  Abundant and cheap energy flowed into country after country.  That energy allowed manufacturing to take off, buoyed trade and brought the standard of living up for billions. Prosperity - thy name is oil.

But wait a sec, if you read my posts you'll already know it's a lot more serious.  Critical minerals, metals and soil quality are all in diminishing supply.  So my friends, we have a multitude of shortages all underpinned by depletion of affordable energy, greed, waste and a belief in fairytales that something will make it all better.  The reality is a non-linear jenga tower that will collapse effecting commerce and a concomitant re-alignment of new best friends and a few old ones that won't get their calls returned.

Energy depletion will drive contraction - the opposite of growth - and all those financializations that depend on growth will go negative and the whole system will lock up.  We need a new system, see some of my earlier posts..

See where I'm going here?  Now let's accept the fact that energy is a finite resource.  Yes, you can quibble that solar panels, wind power, nukes and geothermal energy are going to save the day.  I will respectfully say, sorry, not so.  Everyone of those alternates is completely dependent on fossil fuels from mining the materials, creating more waste, manufacturing the widget, and replacing it when it is worn out with a further draw down of finite energy resources.  They are energy additives that eventually wear out and are not sustainable. Ev's don't make any of this better, or greener, neither do more nuke plants and re-shoring manufacturing to places that don't have energy resources is just stupid talk.  So is building energy sucking data centers that will eventually compete with societal base needs in exchange for clever data aggregation and the saving of payroll spend by firing the millions that are soon to be in the unemployment line.  Those millions will not be too chipper if they can't eat.  So this proposition is actually harmful in at least two ways.  The economic mayhem is actually a simple shift from the private sector expense to a public funding liability needed to support those millions and secondly a profound dumbing down of society that will stunt real creative invention.  But what do I know, I'm just an old engineer with an opinion clacking away at a keyboard trying to share a warning to my fellow citizens of the world.  Not gonna work, don't go there!

So as we go forward, less energy feedstocks are available and at an increasing cost. So the first disruption events are noticed in the energy hungry global neighborhoods.  The geopolitical partners are at this moment considering what to do about their distressed neighbors.  Traditional and mutual strategic policies are being forced into confronting long term survival not short term alliances because this isn't a dip or a transient phenomena - this is the new normal.  NO energy - talk to the hand, not a "core" interest lol..

These geopolitical forces are the greatest to arise in a century. The independent advocates and the old alliances are on the table, which will reshuffle as the world tries to find a new necessary orientation to adjust to the new realities.  The old security provider has lost its role and has to make decisions, just like the person with the distressed friend who lost a job.  To make maters even more confusing this is a clash between traditional power brokers who traditionally get their way by wielding money and the thinkers who are trying to explain to the old school elites that you cannot eat a bar of silver.  This re-thinking of the way the world works is in fact a long overdue reality check. It was always this way, but cheap and easy energy allowed the economists to play recklessly and ignore this fundamental limit to growth which invalidates their economic models. Sorry, physics always wins, cue up a new game.  

In this new environment colonialism may be a first impulse for many old governments, but it does not solve the energy deficit in the long term. Strategic doctrine is morphing into an energy focused information game and evolving into using that intel to sell defensive postures based on what exactly can this ally provide to anybody else. That isn't to say that those who have always resorted to pillaging as a survival and GROWTH method from doing what their ancient instincts tell them they need to do.  But it simply won't work in the long run.  This time it's different.   Wonder what AI program you would ask as to what alliance your country should be pondering?

 

Winter has made a dramatic entrance!

 

This past week parts of Northern Wisconsin have seen nearly three feet (1 meter) of snow!  Snow is piled up higher than most cars along the roadsides, equipment is breaking down and kids are having a blast.

Congrats you win!

I'll be updating my prognostications soon.