Transcripts
Global Crisis,
Speaker:National Renewal:
Speaker:A (Revolutionary)
Speaker:Grand Strategy for the United States By Charles Hugh Smith, narrated by russell newton.
Speaker:All nation-states face the same challenges that together form the Global Crisis
Speaker:of the title - 1.
Speaker:The increasing scarcity of essential resources has ended the era of
Speaker:ever-expanding consumption that was presumed to be permanent.
Speaker:2.
Speaker:Elites’ excessive share of resources,
Speaker:capital and power has destabilized the domestic order.
Speaker:The distribution of resources,
Speaker:capital and agency is the core issue domestically and globally.
Speaker:The tremendous asymmetry of today’s inequality ensures collapse if left to
Speaker:fester.
Speaker:3.
Speaker:The state’s structural weaknesses and the limits on its power are neither
Speaker:acknowledged nor understood.
Speaker:4.
Speaker:Policies that have been solutions for the global expansion since the end of
Speaker:World War Ii are not just failing,
Speaker:they are accelerating the unraveling.
Speaker:They are no longer solutions - they are the problem.
Speaker:5.
Speaker:Rather than being the solution to the problems of scarcity and elite dominance,
Speaker:the state is itself a problem that the state cannot recognize,
Speaker:much less resolve.
Speaker:All Grand Strategies share an implicit belief that existing state structures
Speaker:and leadership can resolve any crisis that arises.
Speaker:The possibility that the system itself is the core problem doesn’t occur to
Speaker:those benefiting from the current arrangement.
Speaker:The foundation of this confidence is self-interest - since the system serves
Speaker:our self-interest,
Speaker:it cannot be the problem.
Speaker:The history of past successes in surmounting crises is another implicit
Speaker:foundation of confidence in the status quo - since this system met every
Speaker:previous challenge successfully,
Speaker:therefore it cannot itself be the problem.
Speaker:This implicit confidence in the existing system generates self-reinforcing
Speaker:responses - if existing policies are failing,
Speaker:the solution is to do more of what worked in the past,
Speaker:that is,
Speaker:doing more of what’s now failing.
Speaker:This confidence in the system creates a blind spot.
Speaker:Since the system can’t be the problem,
Speaker:all evidence that it’s failing is rationalized.
Speaker:As existing policies fail,
Speaker:the temptation to substitute magical thinking for real solutions becomes
Speaker:irresistible.
Speaker:In ancient crises,
Speaker:this temptation manifested as religious rituals or paeans to past glories.
Speaker:In the present era,
Speaker:magical thinking manifests as technological orthodoxy - a new technology will
Speaker:save us.
Speaker:The elites at the top of the wealth-power pyramid are incapable of separating
Speaker:their own interests from those of the state - whatever diminishes my wealth
Speaker:cannot possibly be good for the status quo,
Speaker:as my interests and the interests of the state are one.
Speaker:This self-serving unity breaks down in crises that reveal the widening gap
Speaker:between the common interest and the interests of the elite.
Speaker:States that cannot place the nation’s interests above those of the elite in
Speaker:crises will fail as the nation crumbles under the weight of its outsized
Speaker:self-serving elite.
Speaker:This implicit confidence in the system and the supremacy of self-interest
Speaker:hardens the elite’s commitment to maintaining the system as-is - why change
Speaker:what’s worked well for decades?
Speaker:Why take the risks of changing a system that has served my interests so well?
Speaker:Since previous solutions did not require any elite sacrifice,
Speaker:the elite implicitly believes that solutions that don’t require any personal
Speaker:sacrifice must be available,
Speaker:and so they reject any solution that diminishes their power.
Speaker:This is the current state of affairs.
Speaker:Neither the state nor the elite is willing to recognize that the state and the
Speaker:self-serving elite are the core problems.
Speaker:This guarantees that the state will try one expedient fix after another,
Speaker:increasingly relying on magical thinking as a substitute for recognizing that
Speaker:the system itself is no longer a solution but is itself the problem.
Speaker:Lastly,
Speaker:the concentration of power in the state has created a leviathan with immense
Speaker:inertia.
Speaker:Every agency has an incentive to grind on,
Speaker:changing nothing of substance,
Speaker:with no incentive to risk radical adaptation.
Speaker:This guarantees that real solutions will be rejected as unnecessary since doing
Speaker:more of the same always worked in the past.
Speaker:It is tempting to think that existing structures can resolve these crises,
Speaker:for the tacit assumption is that "all crises are temporary."
Speaker:If energy is scarce,
Speaker:that scarcity is temporary.
Speaker:Financial crises are equally temporary,
Speaker:as the restoration of confidence is presumed to be a self-healing process.
Speaker:Part of the substitution of magical thinking for real solutions is to gloss
Speaker:over the increasing signs of instability and the resulting extremes of policy
Speaker:being deployed to restore the public perception of stability - i.e.,
Speaker:the narrative that "the system is successfully resolving all problems."
Speaker:But beneath the surface,
Speaker:the machinery is being held together by increasingly expedient fixes which are
Speaker:themselves generating new sources of instability.
Speaker:The current system encourages officials to issue assurances that the system is
Speaker:working well.
Speaker:After all,
Speaker:if the public caught wind that the system is failing that would add to the
Speaker:instability,
Speaker:so false assurances are heaped on even as the official narrative veers ever
Speaker:farther from real-world evidence that status quo polices are not fixing the
Speaker:problems.
Speaker:Ever since the emergence of the state as a problem-solving structure,
Speaker:the state’s core solution has been to expand its power to apply more
Speaker:resources to whatever crises arise.
Speaker:This concentration of power generates incentives for an elite to influence the
Speaker:state to serve its interests.
Speaker:In other words,
Speaker:the more power the state concentrates in the hands of top officials,
Speaker:the greater the gains for those who influence the state to grant them tax
Speaker:subsidies,
Speaker:monopolies,
Speaker:etc.
Speaker:State power leverages private wealth,
Speaker:which is the systemic source of soaring inequality - $5 million spent on
Speaker:lobbying and campaign contributions can generate $100 million in private gains.
Speaker:Since few have $5 million to invest in influencing the state to serve private
Speaker:interests,
Speaker:the super-wealthy become wealthier.
Speaker:The state has no mechanism for recognizing that the state itself and the
Speaker:super-wealthy elite are the root problems.
Speaker:The state is not a self-aware system;
Speaker:rather,
Speaker:it is a trial-and-error mechanism that preserves existing solutions as it
Speaker:processes competing claims for its attention and powers.
Speaker:The state has no way to recognize that its own concentration of power is now
Speaker:the source of systemic destabilization.
Speaker:This is the core structural flaw in the state.
Speaker:Three Core System Crises.
Speaker:While states view all crises as solvable with existing policies,
Speaker:the reality is that there are three core crises that are systemic and can only
Speaker:be resolved by new concepts and a radically different state-market system from
Speaker:the one that is globally dominant today.
Speaker:Systemic Crisis #1.
Speaker:The energy required to continue expanding consumption is no longer available at
Speaker:a cost affordable to the bottom 90% of consumers.
Speaker:Total energy available for consumption is declining due to physical
Speaker:constraints;
Speaker:as well,
Speaker:the hope that so-called renewable energy will replace the majority of
Speaker:hydrocarbon energy is magical thinking.
Speaker:The existing state-market system has neither the structure nor the conceptual
Speaker:framework to manage the reversal of ever-expanding consumption to declining
Speaker:consumption.
Speaker:Systemic Crisis #2.
Speaker:Concentrations of wealth and power in elites are inherently destabilizing,
Speaker:because concentrations of wealth accelerate inequality and undermine the
Speaker:foundations of dynamic stability (competition,
Speaker:transparency,
Speaker:feedback,
Speaker:variability,
Speaker:dissent and accountability/skin in the game).
Speaker:The elites’ power results from suppressing these forces.
Speaker:Well-moated monopolies eliminate competition and use their influence to hide
Speaker:transgressions from public exposure,
Speaker:suppressing transparency and accountability.
Speaker:They also influence the state to protect their private gains by transferring
Speaker:losses to the public via bailouts.
Speaker:This institutionalizes moral hazard,
Speaker:the separation of risk and consequence.
Speaker:This is highly destabilizing,
Speaker:as state bailouts encourage ever-riskier bets which become so large they
Speaker:threaten the entire financial system.
Speaker:Inequality is shorthand for the transfer of wealth and power from the many to
Speaker:the few,
Speaker:who then protect their dominance by buying political influence.
Speaker:The decline in political and economic power of the middle class and the
Speaker:dominance of the elite erodes the foundations of domestic stability (i.e.
Speaker:upward mobility,
Speaker:equal treatment before the law,
Speaker:social cohesion,
Speaker:moral legitimacy and civic virtue.
Speaker:Once these foundations are eroded,
Speaker:all that remains are self-interest and corruption.
Speaker:Systems that increase inequality and suppress the mechanisms of dynamic
Speaker:stability are unstable and prone to sudden collapse.
Speaker:This is especially true of democracies,
Speaker:which function by institutionalizing limits on elite power.
Speaker:Once these corrective mechanisms have been neutered,
Speaker:democracy is merely the public-relations cover for a neofeudal autocracy.
Speaker:Systemic Crisis #3.
Speaker:Elites achieve their dominance of wealth and power by placing their
Speaker:self-interest above all else.
Speaker:As states and markets unravel,
Speaker:elites devote their resources to protecting their dominance by suppressing
Speaker:reforms which threaten their power.
Speaker:Having eliminated the possibility of reform,
Speaker:the elites leave the system with only two evolutionary pathways - collapse or a
Speaker:revolutionary convulsion that sweeps the system they control into the dustbin
Speaker:of history.
Speaker:In other words,
Speaker:systems that generate elite dominance are optimized for instability,
Speaker:and systems that limit elite dominance are optimized for stability.
Speaker:The greater the concentration of power in the state,
Speaker:the greater the benefits accruing to any elite that gains political dominance.
Speaker:The more power held by the few at the expense of the many,
Speaker:the greater the systemic instability.
Speaker:This is the irony of great state power - the more power that is concentrated in
Speaker:elites,
Speaker:the greater the intrinsic instability of the system and thus the greater the
Speaker:risk of collapse.
Speaker:It bears repeating - nation-states that concentrate power that can be devoted
Speaker:to serve private interests rather than the common good are intrinsically
Speaker:unstable,
Speaker:and nation-states that distribute power and enforce systemic limits on elites
Speaker:are intrinsically stable.
Speaker:If elites can gain influence over even a sliver of state power and apply that
Speaker:leverage to serve their private interests,
Speaker:this process amplifies inequality.
Speaker:The only possible result of such an arrangement is systemic instability,
Speaker:an instability that veers towards collapse in crisis.
Speaker:Thus,
Speaker:elite dominance is a death sentence for the state and the society it rules,
Speaker:as devoting state power to serve private interests destabilizes the system by
Speaker:stripping it of adaptive vigor and corrupting its civic and moral foundations.
Speaker:Instability and collapse are the only possible outputs of such systems.
Speaker:And labeling an unstable system "socialist" or "capitalist" or "Green" won’t
Speaker:change the outcome.
Speaker:An elite can only gain dominance in a system that concentrates power in
Speaker:hierarchies that can be corrupted,
Speaker:a system in which private interests can disable competition,
Speaker:transparency,
Speaker:feedback,
Speaker:dissent and accountability as hindrances to their dominance.
Speaker:Being systemic,
Speaker:these dynamics cannot be mooted by ideology,
Speaker:good intentions,
Speaker:personalities,
Speaker:public relations or superficial reforms.
Speaker:The only way to transform an unstable system into a stable system is to change
Speaker:the system itself.
Speaker:How to effect that change is the subject of this book.
Speaker:Additional Challenges For The U. S. .
Speaker:In addition to the global crises shared by all states,
Speaker:the United States faces challenges that are unique to its history and structure.
Speaker:1.
Speaker:America’s remarkable success domestically and internationally (its global
Speaker:hegemony,
Speaker:i.e.,
Speaker:its dominant role and influence)
Speaker:over the post-World War Ii era has generated a dangerous overconfidence in the
Speaker:permanent superiority of its institutions and leadership.
Speaker:But past success not only does not guarantee future success,
Speaker:it is a source of potentially fatal hubris.
Speaker:2.
Speaker:America’s elite so completely dominates the economic and political orders
Speaker:that there are no corrective mechanisms left to reverse the fatal consequences
Speaker:of this extreme dominance.
Speaker:3.
Speaker:As a composite state—a state composed of many different ethnicities,
Speaker:faiths regions and classes--the stability of America’s domestic order rests
Speaker:on social cohesion,
Speaker:moral legitimacy,
Speaker:civic virtue and a shared national purpose.
Speaker:All of these have unraveled,
Speaker:leaving the domestic order prone to disorder and collapse.
Speaker:Once the domestic order unravels,
Speaker:so too does global hegemony.
Speaker:4.
Speaker:America’s lofty ideals of personal liberty and agency (a say in public
Speaker:decisions,
Speaker:control of one’s life)
Speaker:are at odds with the informal tyranny of daily life in an economy that serves
Speaker:the interests of the wealthiest few at the expense of the many,
Speaker:whose agency is limited by the dominance of the elite who control the vast
Speaker:majority of political and financial power.
Speaker:5.
Speaker:As a representational democracy composite state holding lofty ideals,
Speaker:America’s social ontology requires a moral foundation that limits the
Speaker:dominance of self-interest.
Speaker:However,
Speaker:self-interest is now the guiding principle in America,
Speaker:and this winner take most ideology has demolished the moral foundations of
Speaker:democracy and open markets.
Speaker:6.
Speaker:America’s social ontology dismisses limits as defeatist and encourages a
Speaker:quasi-religious faith in can-do technological solutions for all problems.
Speaker:7.
Speaker:As the issuer of the dominant reserve currency (the U. S. dollar)
Speaker:and guarantor of the global financial system,
Speaker:central bank distortions of credit and risk have fatally undermined the
Speaker:stability of the financial system.
Speaker:Successful empires share some or all these traits - overconfidence,
Speaker:the dominance of what historian Peter Turchin terms parasitic elites,
Speaker:an unruly composite society of multiple populaces,
Speaker:politically expedient debauchery of finance and a propensity for magical
Speaker:thinking when faced with novel crises.
Speaker:Given this social ontology,
Speaker:some readers may be predisposed to declare all problems as solvable by new
Speaker:technologies or the existing tool bag of reforms.
Speaker:To break through this predisposition requires a deep critique many may find
Speaker:disturbing because it exposes physical and institutional limits that cannot be
Speaker:resolved with reforms or technological fixes.
Speaker:Many will find the moral rot the critique exposes equally disturbing.
Speaker:As you read through the rest of Section One,
Speaker:keep in mind that each dynamic is part of the entire system and is connected
Speaker:synergistically to the other dynamics,
Speaker:either beneficially or destructively.
Speaker:This whole—which includes what I term the social ontology,
Speaker:resources,
Speaker:the economy and the political sphere—is an emergent system,
Speaker:which means that the whole is not just more than the sum of all its parts,
Speaker:it is an entirely different structure with its own dynamics.
Speaker:Put another way - though we separate the social,
Speaker:economic and political orders for analytic purposes,
Speaker:each cannot be understood as a separate system.
Speaker:In a similar fashion,
Speaker:we cannot separate the material world of resources from the social constructs
Speaker:of money or the intangible but very real world of morals,
Speaker:values and the common good.
Speaker:The typical socio-economic-political analysis is bloodless,
Speaker:avoiding the intangibles of morality,
Speaker:values and fairness.
Speaker:In the modernist ideology,
Speaker:the individual is supreme and thus free to define everything to fit
Speaker:self-interest.
Speaker:This ideology also views the individual as a rational economic actor for whom
Speaker:the pursuit of self-interest is not only natural,
Speaker:it is the core organizing principle of human existence.
Speaker:This truncated understanding is a common thread in the fatal synergies we
Speaker:examine in this section.
Speaker:As befits a novel analysis,
Speaker:you will encounter novel phrases and meanings here,
Speaker:as I have created new terms out of necessity.
Speaker:Conventional histories of geopolitics are organized around ideologies,
Speaker:policies and individuals.
Speaker:This analysis arises from an entirely different context - the study of systems.
Speaker:An example will help illuminate the difference.
Speaker:Systems analyst Eric Bonabeau described how traffic gridlock forms without an
Speaker:accident,
Speaker:blockage or leadership - "Traffic jams are actually very complicated and
Speaker:mysterious.
Speaker:On an individual level,
Speaker:each driver is trying to get somewhere and is following (or breaking)
Speaker:certain rules,
Speaker:some legal (the speed limit)
Speaker:and others societal or personal (slow down to let another driver change into
Speaker:your lane).
Speaker:But a traffic jam is a separate and distinct entity that emerges from those
Speaker:individual behaviors.
Speaker:Gridlock on a highway,
Speaker:for example,
Speaker:can travel backward for no apparent reason,
Speaker:even as the cars are moving forward."
Speaker:Once traffic freezes in gridlock,
Speaker:a magnetic leader (shall we say Napoleon?)
Speaker:stuck in a vehicle has no more power to relieve the congestion than any other
Speaker:participant.
Speaker:(A “whiff of grapeshot” won’t dissipate gridlock.)
Speaker:The wealthiest few in the costliest vehicles are equally powerless to escape or
Speaker:reverse the congestion.
Speaker:This is at odds with the conventions of Grand Strategy,
Speaker:which hold that Great Leaders implementing corrective policies can reverse any
Speaker:systemic failure.
Speaker:In this secular faith,
Speaker:every situation is akin to Apple just before Steve Jobs returned to rescue the
Speaker:company from collapse - the right leader with the right policies and
Speaker:technologies can take control of any problem and solve it.
Speaker:But not all problems share the same structure as Apple,
Speaker:a hierarchical corporation organized around the sole goal of maximizing profits
Speaker:from consumer technologies.
Speaker:Self-organizing systems are not like corporations,
Speaker:they are like traffic flows,
Speaker:and the complex systems we are concerned with here—nation-states,
Speaker:economies and societies—all have self-organizing characteristics and limits
Speaker:imposed by physics and finance.
Speaker:Our secular faith holds that all systems are hierarchical in structure .- Great
Speaker:Leaders solve problems by issuing orders that flow down a military-like chain
Speaker:of command.
Speaker:But complex systems are more akin to ecosystems than militaries.
Speaker:Their problem-solving arises from evolutionary adaptability,
Speaker:not from a top-down chain of command.
Speaker:The desire for easy fixes that don’t rock the boat is understandable,
Speaker:but problems can only be solved if they are understood systemically and
Speaker:dispassionately.
Speaker:If the diagnosis is superficially rosy but wrong,
Speaker:the patient expires.
Speaker:The irony here is the desire for sacrifice-free solutions blocks the real
Speaker:solutions that await us if we face the problems directly in all their systemic
Speaker:complexity and depth.
Speaker:The Unrecognized Threat.
Speaker:The Grand Strategy of the United States has remained remarkably consistent for
Speaker:the past 75 years - in the conventional view,
Speaker:geopolitical rivals pose the primary threat to American security,
Speaker:so the U. S. deploys multilateral treaties,
Speaker:alliances,
Speaker:trade agreements,
Speaker:soft power and warfighting capabilities to blunt competing great powers.
Speaker:Our responses have evolved but we assume that the threat—geopolitical
Speaker:rivals—remains unchanged.
Speaker:Though few recognize it,
Speaker:the threat has changed.
Speaker:The greatest threat to America’s security arises not from global rivals but
Speaker:from the unraveling of America’s domestic order and the precariousness of the
Speaker:world’s oil-debt duopoly.
Speaker:Few recognize this fundamental shift because the Grand Strategy has always
Speaker:taken the durability of America’s domestic political,
Speaker:economic and social orders for granted,
Speaker:along with the abundance of natural resources and the permanence of economic
Speaker:expansion.
Speaker:As a result,
Speaker:for the past 75 years,
Speaker:when we speak of Grand Strategy,
Speaker:the conversation starts and ends with geopolitical rivals.
Speaker:This preoccupation with geopolitics is dangerously misleading,
Speaker:for the foundation of any Grand Strategy is the domestic economy and polity.
Speaker:No geopolitical strategy or military can outlast the decay and collapse of a
Speaker:state’s domestic order.
Speaker:In effect,
Speaker:the greatest threat to America’s global hegemony is unrecognized.
Speaker:Viewed through the geopolitical filter,
Speaker:states fail as a result of war,
Speaker:conquest or bolts from the blue such as pandemics or drought.
Speaker:But if we remove this filter,
Speaker:we find that the decay of the domestic economic,
Speaker:political and social orders is the decisive factor.
Speaker:States fail when the domestic economy no longer generates enough surplus to
Speaker:fund the state and the parasitic elites that have come to dominate the state.
Speaker:The final collapse is the result of the state mismanaging the distribution of
Speaker:dwindling resources and its failure to properly understand novel challenges and
Speaker:its own weaknesses.
Speaker:Rather than fulfilling what should be its core role as the organizational
Speaker:solution to crises and scarcities,
Speaker:the state itself becomes the problem.
Speaker:Having failed as a solution,
Speaker:the state falls and is replaced by another arrangement.
Speaker:Seven Systems Themes.
Speaker:The shelf of books on systems is long and so some distillation is required.
Speaker:Since this book is a systems-level look at complex problems,
Speaker:I refer to systems throughout.
Speaker:Seven themes inform this inquiry - 1.
Speaker:Controls on any system come from the next larger scale phenomena.
Speaker:2.
Speaker:Systemic collapses can be initiated by small defects.
Speaker:3.
Speaker:New sources of information / feedback can serve as leverage points that change
Speaker:the entire system.
Speaker:(Per Donnella Meadows)
Speaker:4.
Speaker:Evolutionary leaps / revolutionary advances are only possible if the requisite
Speaker:preconditions are already in place.
Speaker:5.
Speaker:Small islands of coherence have the capacity to change an entire system.
Speaker:(Per Ilya Prigogine)
Speaker:6.
Speaker:We can only manage what we measure.
Speaker:7.
Speaker:If the system is controlled by one of its nodes,
Speaker:the system cannot serve the common interests of all the nodes.
Speaker:Even if they are not explicitly cited,
Speaker:these concepts inform the critique (Sections One,
Speaker:Two,
Speaker:Three and Four)
Speaker:and the proposed solutions (Section Five).
Speaker:Overall,
Speaker:there are two general observations about systems to keep in mind going forward
Speaker:- 1)
Speaker:Emergent (self-organizing)
Speaker:systems are governed by initial conditions and constraints,
Speaker:and 2)
Speaker:Systems that avoid adaptations as potential threats to the status quo are prone
Speaker:to collapse.
Speaker:What Is National Security?
Speaker:As noted in the Introduction,
Speaker:Grand Strategy is ultimately the pursuit of security in its broadest measure.
Speaker:While traditional Grand Strategy focuses on the geopolitical goals of
Speaker:protecting national interests,
Speaker:these are simply the means to securing the resources needed for the well-being
Speaker:and security of the citizenry.
Speaker:Well-being requires both the material essentials of life—food,
Speaker:clean water,
Speaker:shelter,
Speaker:healthcare and so on—and the intangible rights to civil liberties and
Speaker:agency—a say in public decisions,
Speaker:social mobility and control of one’s life.
Speaker:Well-being requires an infrastructure that ensures a distribution of resources
Speaker:that ensures none will starve while others feast.
Speaker:States that fail to secure sufficient resources for their citizenry have short
Speaker:lifespans.
Speaker:Resources can become scarce for a number of reasons.
Speaker:The nation’s resources can be depleted and substitutes are not available.
Speaker:The population can expand rapidly,
Speaker:outpacing available resources.
Speaker:The state can promote the expansion of consumption by economic stimulus,
Speaker:pushing demand above what the system can provide.
Speaker:The cost of essentials can rise above what most of the populace can afford.
Speaker:Geopolitical shifts can restrict the global availability of resources.
Speaker:Resource-rich nations can restrict their exports due to rising domestic demand.
Speaker:Parasitic elites can hoard resources,
Speaker:creating shortages for the bottom 90%.
Speaker:In sum,
Speaker:scarcity has many sources.
Speaker:A nation that is dependent on foreign sources for essentials is extremely
Speaker:vulnerable to disruption.
Speaker:The dependent nation’s security is extremely fragile,
Speaker:as any break in the supply chain,
Speaker:whether accidental or planned,
Speaker:or any sharp increase in the cost of essentials,
Speaker:threatens the nation with breakdown.
Speaker:The United States made a decision at the beginning of the 21st century to
Speaker:offshore much of its manufacturing base to increase corporate profits,
Speaker:which rose from $500 billion in 2000 to $2.7 trillion in 2021.
Speaker:(Adjusted for inflation,
Speaker:profits would be $800 billion in 2021 had margins remained at 2000 levels.)
Speaker:The United States also made a second decision in 2000,
Speaker:to fully financialize its economy and society by vastly expanding debt and
Speaker:leverage to fund an increase in consumption and asset prices.
Speaker:Although these decisions can’t be traced to a specific vote or policy,
Speaker:each was nonetheless a decision,
Speaker:for there was nothing inevitable about increasing the nation’s dependence on
Speaker:foreign sources or promoting consumption by expanding debt and asset bubbles.
Speaker:These decisions were the result of systemic incentives and values which I
Speaker:discuss in following chapters - the worship of growth at any cost,
Speaker:the ascendance of self-interest and the rise of incentives to maximize private
Speaker:gains and asset prices by any means available,
Speaker:both of which disproportionately benefit the elite that owns the vast majority
Speaker:of assets.
Speaker:The key point here is these are systemic,
Speaker:meaning they are not limited to one social,
Speaker:political or economic pocket.
Speaker:As I will explain in following chapters,
Speaker:once these incentives and values are instantiated,
Speaker:the only possible output of that system is fragility,
Speaker:instability and collapse.
Speaker:Historian Immanuel Wallerstein’s characterization of this system is apt - "A
Speaker:particular historical configuration of markets and state structures where
Speaker:private economic gain by almost any means is the paramount goal and measure of
Speaker:success."
Speaker:The resulting expansion of private wealth generates a self-reinforcing feedback
Speaker:loop - the more wealth the elite accrue,
Speaker:the more political influence they acquire to protect their gains and extend
Speaker:their power.
Speaker:This feedback loop has resulted in an elite powerful enough to neuter the
Speaker:corrective mechanisms in America’s political order.
Speaker:This unprecedented concentration of wealth and power has destabilized the
Speaker:nation by increasing its dependence on foreign sources and dominating the
Speaker:financial and political spheres to serve the interests of the few at the
Speaker:expense of the many.
Speaker:These two dynamics—the decisions to trade dependence on foreign sources of
Speaker:essentials for vastly greater private wealth,
Speaker:and the self-reinforcing feedback loop of ever greater concentrations of wealth
Speaker:and power—have undermined national security.
Speaker:The nation has ceded control of essentials and pricing power to other nations,
Speaker:and ceded control of the domestic economy to an elite that solely serves its
Speaker:own self-interest.
Speaker:As a result,
Speaker:scarcities in material essentials can no longer be filled from domestic
Speaker:sources,
Speaker:and civil liberties and agency have been eroded as threats to elite dominance.
Speaker:The erosion of independence--the capacity to supply the citizenry with
Speaker:essentials from domestic sources—has profoundly undermined our national
Speaker:security in ways few understand.
Speaker:Promoters of global trade calculate the benefits in a deceptively superficial
Speaker:fashion - if a pharmaceutical precursor compound costs $1 less when sourced
Speaker:overseas,
Speaker:to proponents this is an unquestioned benefit to the importing nation.
Speaker:The flaws in this superficial calculus only become visible when 80% of the
Speaker:nation’s pharmaceuticals are entirely dependent on foreign sources,
Speaker:sources which can be withheld for geopolitical blackmail or to serve the
Speaker:exporting nation’s domestic populace.
Speaker:When an essential industry becomes dependent on foreign sources,
Speaker:that industry is insecure,
Speaker:and thus the nation is insecure.
Speaker:The shortages of essential supplies in America at the onset of the Covid
Speaker:pandemic revealed the fatal weakness of superficial calculations of trade’s
Speaker:benefits - dependence has a consequential cost that cannot be discerned in
Speaker:price tags which are distorted by exporters’ subsidies and currency arbitrage.
Speaker:What trade proponents fail to understand is what’s decisively consequential
Speaker:isn’t price,
Speaker:it’s the essential or non-essential nature of the goods,
Speaker:services and industries being imported.
Speaker:Consider Imperial Rome’s vast trade in aromatic woods grown in Arabia that
Speaker:wealthy Romans burned for incense.
Speaker:While the elite’s culture of abundance considered such incense essential,
Speaker:it was clearly non-essential compared to the gold and silver that was drained
Speaker:from the Imperial economy by the enormous importation of incense .- Rome’s
Speaker:wealth literally went up in smoke.
Speaker:The difference between essential and non-essential goods becomes clear when
Speaker:imports are disrupted.
Speaker:If imports of non-essentials such as toys and luxury items are cut off,
Speaker:retailers suffer but the populace is little affected.
Speaker:If imports of essentials such as metals,
Speaker:semiconductors and pharmaceuticals are cut off,
Speaker:the populace is thrown into a crisis of scarcities that cannot be filled.
Speaker:As I will emphasize in later sections,
Speaker:we only manage what we measure,
Speaker:and superficial calculations of price don’t measure national dependence or
Speaker:vulnerability;
Speaker:conventional metrics of trade only measure price and private profit.
Speaker:The gains of trade that creates national dependence are private,
Speaker:while the potentially disastrous consequences of national vulnerability fall on
Speaker:the public.
Speaker:This absurdly narrow calculation of gain—price and private profit—is
Speaker:subject to what I term the tyranny of price,
Speaker:a topic I’ll explore in later sections.
Speaker:This tyranny holds that a lower price is always a gain for all parties - the
Speaker:seller,
Speaker:the importer and the consumer.
Speaker:Proponents of trade claim that lower prices benefit consumers and thus the
Speaker:national interest,
Speaker:but these claims are specious - most of the reduction in price results from a
Speaker:decline in the quality and durability of the imported goods and the arbitrage
Speaker:of currencies.
Speaker:To name one example,
Speaker:household appliances that lasted 20 years two generations ago when they were
Speaker:manufactured in the U. S. now routinely fail in a few years now that their
Speaker:components are made in other nations,
Speaker:and the repair costs are often equal to the cost of a replacement—a key
Speaker:driver in the Landfill Economy of planned obsolescence and low-quality
Speaker:production using the cheapest components.
Speaker:Once again,
Speaker:the costs of wholesale declines in quality and durability are not included in
Speaker:the price,
Speaker:yet these declines are extremely costly over the long term to both consumers
Speaker:and the nation.
Speaker:In other words,
Speaker:the market only prices trade as a measure of private gain - lower production
Speaker:costs overseas create bigger profits for importers.
Speaker:This simplistic pricing has no mechanism to recognize,
Speaker:much less measure,
Speaker:the national consequences of collapsing quality or dependence on foreign
Speaker:sources for essentials.
Speaker:Stated plainly,
Speaker:dependency on foreign sources benefits the few who own the vast majority of
Speaker:corporate assets at the expense of the nation’s security.
Speaker:Those reaping immense private profits naturally claim their profiteering
Speaker:benefits the national interest,
Speaker:but the reality is just the opposite - private profiteering has severely
Speaker:undermined the nation’s core security,
Speaker:which is being able to provide its citizenry the essentials of life without
Speaker:being vulnerable to scarcities created by dependence on foreign sources.
Speaker:Those profiting from dependence on foreign sources for essentials have the
Speaker:means to buy political protection of their racket - the billions of dollars in
Speaker:higher profits buy political influence.
Speaker:As a result,
Speaker:trade that benefits the elite while undermining national security is
Speaker:politically sacrosanct.
Speaker:What is national security?
Speaker:National security is freedom from the vulnerabilities of dependence on other
Speaker:nations for essentials.
Speaker:Security is not being at the mercy of other nations’ power over supply chains
Speaker:and pricing.
Speaker:Security is freedom from the dominance of elites whose pursuit of self-interest
Speaker:undermine national security.
Speaker:Scarcity Has Many Sources.
Speaker:Conventional Grand Strategy assumes 1)
Speaker:material essentials can be secured in whatever quantities are desired with
Speaker:America’s financial might and 2)
Speaker:the domestic social order is so enduringly stable that Grand Strategy is free
Speaker:to focus on geopolitical maneuvering.
Speaker:Both of these assumptions are false.
Speaker:Now that America is dependent on other nations for much of its material
Speaker:essentials,
Speaker:America is profoundly insecure,
Speaker:as these nations can cut off exports or raise prices to levels that crush
Speaker:American enterprises and households.
Speaker:America’s leverage is essentially zero should exporting nations limit exports
Speaker:to supply their own rising domestic consumption.
Speaker:Should a revolutionary government cut off exports to the U. S. ,
Speaker:the options to force a resumption of exports are impractical - short of
Speaker:invading and occupying the offending nation—an action with grave risks and
Speaker:costs with no historical track record of success—the only option is to seek
Speaker:alternative sources which will naturally become much costlier due to the
Speaker:reduction in global supply.
Speaker:This dependence was a choice driven by the desire to maximize private gains.
Speaker:In effect,
Speaker:by offshoring supply chains and manufacturing,
Speaker:America traded its national security for higher corporate profits,
Speaker:the vast majority of which flowed to the elite.
Speaker:The assumption that America’s demand for essentials magically creates
Speaker:abundant,
Speaker:affordable supplies globally is also false.
Speaker:As the lowest-cost deposits of oil,
Speaker:minerals,
Speaker:etc. have been depleted,
Speaker:what’s left is much more costly to extract and transport.
Speaker:While engineers assure us the technologies of extracting oil,
Speaker:minerals,
Speaker:etc.,
Speaker:have improved so much that costs have fallen,
Speaker:these assurances overlook the realities of distance,
Speaker:lack of infrastructure and geopolitical risks.
Speaker:They also overlook the irreplaceable role of diesel fuel in all these
Speaker:extraction technologies.
Speaker:Consider an untapped mineral deposit hundreds of kilometers from any roads,
Speaker:navigable rivers or blue-water ports,
Speaker:for example in Afghanistan or central Africa.
Speaker:The entire infrastructure to reach the site must be built and maintained,
Speaker:and millions of liters of diesel fuel delivered to power the massive equipment
Speaker:needed to extract the resources.
Speaker:Then the ore must be transported hundreds of kilometers to a port capable of
Speaker:handling this tremendous bulk commodity.
Speaker:All this infrastructure exists in the U. S. ,
Speaker:but is lacking in much of the world.
Speaker:Many untapped deposits are in nations with limited political stability,
Speaker:so investors who put up the billions of dollars needed to start production
Speaker:might receive an Ak-47 bullet as a dividend.
Speaker:Once these costs are included,
Speaker:the resources are no longer low-cost,
Speaker:if they are accessible at all.
Speaker:In other words,
Speaker:in an idealized setting,
Speaker:high-tech production methods may promise low costs,
Speaker:but in the real world,
Speaker:costs and the risks of disruption are far higher than rosy idealized
Speaker:projections.
Speaker:Since U. S. household earnings have stagnated for decades—a reality
Speaker:addressed in later chapters—higher costs are unaffordable to American
Speaker:consumers.
Speaker:Attempting to secure distant resources with military power may be an appealing
Speaker:plot for a Hollywood film,
Speaker:but the real world is much more difficult to secure and control.
Speaker:Having ceded control of supply chains to other nations,
Speaker:military power may secure sea lanes but not the goods or the prices of the
Speaker:goods transiting those sea lanes.
Speaker:Let’s briefly recap a few of the potential sources of scarcity of essentials
Speaker:- 1.
Speaker:Resources have been depleted globally so there is no longer enough supply to
Speaker:meet rising global demand at affordable prices.
Speaker:2.
Speaker:Exporting nations restrict exports to meet rising domestic demand.
Speaker:3.
Speaker:The low-hanging fruit has been consumed and remaining deposits are in
Speaker:difficult-to-access regions of extreme conditions or political disorder.
Speaker:4.
Speaker:Exporting nations cut off exports to the U. S. as a form of leverage.
Speaker:5.
Speaker:Remaining deposits are under the control of geopolitical rivals.
Speaker:6.
Speaker:There is no longer sufficient diesel fuel to power the global supply chain of
Speaker:mining and transport of essential minerals - the limiting factor is not the
Speaker:availability of deposits but of the fuel needed to extract and transport ores.
Speaker:7.
Speaker:Supplies are available but at prices that are unaffordable to American
Speaker:households with stagnant purchasing power,
Speaker:i.e.,
Speaker:the bottom 90%.
Speaker:8.
Speaker:Having tired of neocolonial exploitation of their national resources,
Speaker:revolutionary governments expropriate developed-world resource extraction
Speaker:assets and take control of extraction and exports.
Speaker:Having traded national security for higher private profits,
Speaker:the obvious solution is to develop domestic sources for essentials even if this
Speaker:reduces corporate profits.
Speaker:The other obvious solution is to reduce consumption so fewer resources are
Speaker:needed to maintain citizens’ well-being.
Speaker:The second assumption made by conventional Grand Strategy—that the domestic
Speaker:order is secure—is also false,
Speaker:as the inequality generated by elite dominance has fatally destabilized the
Speaker:economic- social-political order.
Speaker:What Is Degrowth?
Speaker:I refer to Degrowth and the Degrowth state,
Speaker:economy and society throughout the book,
Speaker:and so a definition is needed at the start. degrowth is the English translation
Speaker:of decroissance,
Speaker:a French word coined in 1976 to describe a philosophy that has expanded into a
Speaker:global movement from 1977 to the present.
Speaker:The root meaning is decline,
Speaker:which refers to both the economy and the state.
Speaker:The core thesis of this book and the degrowth movement is the global economy
Speaker:based on permanent expansion of consumption is unsustainable due to planetary
Speaker:limits - infinite growth on a finite planet is not possible.
Speaker:The problem is the current global economic system is optimized for permanent
Speaker:expansion,
Speaker:as the consensus holds that without permanent expansion,
Speaker:the world will fall into the abyss of depression and the conflicts that arise
Speaker:from widespread economic hardship.
Speaker:This consensus formed after the Great Depression of the 1930s led to world war.
Speaker:What the consensus conveniently ignores is the world has changed in the past 90
Speaker:years of fast-rising consumption.
Speaker:The human population was much smaller in 1930 and per capita consumption was a
Speaker:fraction of current consumption of energy and resources.
Speaker:Recoverable resources are no longer abundant,
Speaker:and humanity’s vast consumption of hydrocarbons has had planetary
Speaker:consequences.
Speaker:The degrowth movement holds that this obsession with permanent growth is not
Speaker:just unrealistic,
Speaker:it is destructive to society,
Speaker:as every aspect of everyday life has been oriented to the goal of expanding
Speaker:consumption.
Speaker:This tyranny of growth has distilled all of human endeavor into measures of
Speaker:growth such as Gross Domestic Product (G. D. P. ),
Speaker:to the detriment of well-being.
Speaker:1)
Speaker:The degrowth movement is diverse and includes many different threads,
Speaker:but what unifies the degrowth movement is the conviction that we have a choice
Speaker:as individuals,
Speaker:nations and as a species.
Speaker:This book outlines the only sustainable,
Speaker:realistic option for nation-states in an era of scarcity - degrowth.
Speaker:2)
Speaker:The consensus holds out a false choice of replacing our immense consumption of
Speaker:hydrocarbons with renewable energy,
Speaker:which is not actually renewable,
Speaker:as it requires consuming ever-greater amounts of hydrocarbons and resources to
Speaker:be built and then replaced every 20 years.
Speaker:3)
Speaker:The real-world option to degrowth is the unraveling of entire status quo - the
Speaker:financial system,
Speaker:global supply chains and highly complex states with enormous commitments to
Speaker:sustaining ever-higher consumption,
Speaker:all of which depend on ever-expanding debt to function.
Speaker:The status quo system has no degrowth mechanism - being optimized for growth,
Speaker:its only choice is expand or collapse.
Speaker:4)
Speaker:My analysis of the status quo and degrowth differs from the large body of
Speaker:post-growth academic studies in several ways.
Speaker:One is that I see the state as inherently unstable due to its systemic
Speaker:structure as a tightly bound concentration of power.
Speaker:The only path to a sustainable,
Speaker:stable state is to transform the American state and economy into a much
Speaker:different type of system of decentralized degrowth.
Speaker:5)
Speaker:Another is that I see any post-growth transformation not as a series of
Speaker:top-down policies but as a bottom-up evolution of social values,
Speaker:narratives and norms.
Speaker:In my view,
Speaker:the state and society must co-evolve;
Speaker:if one fails to adapt,
Speaker:both will fail.
Speaker:6)
Speaker:A third difference is that I see the restoration of a moral foundation as
Speaker:essential to any post-growth progress.
Speaker:7)
Speaker:The fourth difference is I see the unprecedented inequality in the United
Speaker:States as the only possible outcome of the status quo system.
Speaker:This inequality,
Speaker:inherently corrupting and destabilizing,
Speaker:is as much an existential threat to the nation as the end of the waste is
Speaker:growth fantasy of endless expansion of consumption.
Speaker:8)
Speaker:For all these reasons,
Speaker:we must understand the existing state and economy as complex systems before we
Speaker:can draw the blueprints for a sustainable,
Speaker:stable democratic state and economy.
Speaker:The Core Purpose Of The State.
Speaker:All socio-economic arrangements,
Speaker:from hunter-gatherer groups to nation-states,
Speaker:arise to perform one function - gather and distribute resources,
Speaker:capital and agency in a manner that is deemed by the members to be superior to
Speaker:other arrangements.
Speaker:As circumstances change,
Speaker:organisms and cooperative arrangements must adapt and evolve to survive.
Speaker:In human experience,
Speaker:this process of adaptation and evolution is called problem-solving.
Speaker:Every such arrangement is a problem-solving structure,
Speaker:with the core problems facing individuals and cooperative arrangements (groups)
Speaker:being scarcity of resources,
Speaker:collection and distribution of those resources,
Speaker:and agency (i.e.,
Speaker:having a say in the distribution,
Speaker:a positive social role worthy of a share and opportunities to improve one’s
Speaker:share).
Speaker:Individuals and groups without enough resources expire.
Speaker:Individuals who receive less than others are at risk of withering away,
Speaker:and those with no say are at risk of being cut out of the distribution.
Speaker:In other words,
Speaker:any successful arrangement must improve the odds of both the group and every
Speaker:member surviving scarcity,
Speaker:and increase the odds of the group emerging stronger.
Speaker:The interests of the group and each member overlap but are not identical - the
Speaker:group serves the shared interests of members,
Speaker:but the group is not merely the sum of members’ interests;
Speaker:it is a separate phenomenon with its own dynamics independent of each
Speaker:member’s individual interests,
Speaker:dynamics which override each individual’s interests.
Speaker:Since the group confers advantages that no individual can generate on their
Speaker:own—cooperative effort,
Speaker:shared resources,
Speaker:greater problem-solving capacity,
Speaker:a larger pool of mutual aid during illness and want--the group’s survival is
Speaker:in the individual’s self-interest.
Speaker:Given the choice of abandoning the group to consume an extra portion or
Speaker:sacrificing the extra portion as a cost of membership,
Speaker:the individual who goes it alone for a short-term gain will lose all the
Speaker:long-term advantages of belonging to a group.
Speaker:The odds of the solo individual surviving are much lower than the odds of the
Speaker:group surviving,
Speaker:for the individual has very limited capacity to store up a buffer of surplus
Speaker:against hard times,
Speaker:and extremely limited defensive capacity because all people must sleep.
Speaker:The group as an organized cooperative arrangement has interests far larger than
Speaker:the individual members,
Speaker:for it must not just concern itself with gathering and distributing resources,
Speaker:maintaining a defensive capacity,
Speaker:etc.
Speaker:It must also maintain group cohesion lest the individuals cease to cooperate
Speaker:and the group dissolves.
Speaker:To accomplish cohesion,
Speaker:the group must enable each member’s agency (having a say in shared decisions)
Speaker:while maintaining some form of decision-making process that resolves conflicts
Speaker:and organizes cooperative efforts.
Speaker:This structure must generate shared purpose and shared goals,
Speaker:since individuals who each pursue their own ideas of hunting game,
Speaker:farming,
Speaker:etc. cannot equal the productivity of individuals acting cooperatively.
Speaker:Once the group settles on mutually beneficial goals,
Speaker:implementing the cooperative effort without wasting precious time and effort on
Speaker:endless squabbling requires some mutually agreed upon leadership and compliance
Speaker:- someone is chosen to lead the cooperative effort to the benefit to every
Speaker:member,
Speaker:and each member agrees to comply with the group’s decision and the leadership
Speaker:as the necessary cost to gain the benefits of cooperation.
Speaker:Existential Crises.
Speaker:Everyone naturally wants an arrangement that suits their personal desires,
Speaker:but the only way to control such an arrangement is to be alone,
Speaker:and the selective pressure on solo individuals is so intense that the vast
Speaker:majority of those individuals opting for the complete control of going solo
Speaker:perish and are eliminated from the gene pool.
Speaker:This selective process favors individuals who are willing to pay the price of
Speaker:cooperation (i.e.,
Speaker:ceding control of one’s efforts)
Speaker:in exchange for the tremendous survival advantages offered by cooperation.
Speaker:This is the inescapable tension of human existence - we each want control of
Speaker:our own lives,
Speaker:but since going solo offers little selective advantage in problem-solving
Speaker:scarcity,
Speaker:our self-interest is best served by cooperative arrangements which require
Speaker:sacrificing some measure of agency in exchange for the benefits of cooperation.
Speaker:Balancing The Inherent Tension Is Key.
Speaker:There is no perfect solution to this tension;
Speaker:the core dynamics of cooperation--consensus,
Speaker:leadership and compliance--are all contingent and in constant motion as
Speaker:circumstances change.
Speaker:There are no impartial participants in cooperative arrangements,
Speaker:and so tensions are inherent.
Speaker:There is also inescapable tension between the group’s interests and the
Speaker:self-interest of members,
Speaker:as the members expect the group to improve their personal circumstances.
Speaker:If the group demands sacrifices,
Speaker:each member complies,
Speaker:but if their personal circumstances don’t improve,
Speaker:their loyalty to the group’s leadership and their willingness to sacrifice
Speaker:decays.
Speaker:The balance between costs and benefits is contingent on many factors,
Speaker:including the perceived risks of leaving the group and the benefits gained by
Speaker:finding another arrangement that demands more acceptable sacrifices.
Speaker:The tension between self-interest and the group’s interests manifests as a
Speaker:spectrum,
Speaker:anchored on one end by the free-rider problem created when an individual finds
Speaker:a way to collect the benefits of membership but no longer makes any sacrifices
Speaker:on behalf of the group.
Speaker:If enough individuals become free-riders,
Speaker:the group no longer has the workforce needed to gather resources,
Speaker:and so the group fails as a solution to scarcity.
Speaker:At the other end of the spectrum,
Speaker:the group demands the complete surrender of agency and consensus as the price
Speaker:of membership,
Speaker:and group cohesion is enforced by coercion rather than the social pressure of
Speaker:compliance.
Speaker:This increases the benefits of escaping the group’s authority or making the
Speaker:minimal acceptable effort (“we pretend to work and they pretend to pay us”).
Speaker:Coercion has direct costs (force is far from free)
Speaker:and indirect costs,
Speaker:as once the workforce views the group as a high-sacrifice and low-benefit
Speaker:arrangement,
Speaker:the incentives to opt out increase.
Speaker:This erosion of cooperative effort weakens the group as a solution to scarcity.
Speaker:In other words,
Speaker:the group can only maintain cohesion and remain a solution to scarcity if it
Speaker:offers enough benefits to individuals in return for the sacrifices required.
Speaker:Once individuals conclude their self-interest is better served by abandoning
Speaker:the group or free-riding,
Speaker:the group’s ability to problem-solve scarcity dissolves.
Speaker:Another innate source of tension arises from factions jockeying for a larger
Speaker:share of the group’s resources.
Speaker:The faction members’ self-interests are served by wrangle a larger share for
Speaker:the faction,
Speaker:and so factions form alliances to divert resources from the group.
Speaker:This siphoning of resources at the expense of other members subverts the group
Speaker:in two ways - it reduces the shares of members outside the faction,
Speaker:weakening their loyalty,
Speaker:and it encourages other factions to form and compete for the spoils.
Speaker:This infighting diverts effort that once served common interests to
Speaker:unproductive intrigues which favor deception,
Speaker:bribes,
Speaker:etc.,
Speaker:all of which corrode trust in the group’s core functions,
Speaker:problem-solving scarcity and serving the shared interests of all members.
Speaker:Tension between leadership and membership is also inescapable,
Speaker:as the authority granted leaders comes with built-in temptations to serve the
Speaker:interests of the leadership above those of the group by taking a larger share
Speaker:of resources and using their authority to suppress efforts to limit their
Speaker:self-aggrandizement.
Speaker:As we shall explore in subsequent chapters,
Speaker:the temptations to take an outsized share of resources and suppress dissent
Speaker:systemically cripple the group’s problem-solving capacity.
Speaker:By siphoning off resources to their sole benefit at the expense of the group,
Speaker:the elite undermines one of the group’s core selective advantages,
Speaker:which is maintaining cohesion by serving the shared interests of all members.
Speaker:In suppressing transparency,
Speaker:competition,
Speaker:accountability,
Speaker:feedback and dissent as threats to the elite’s own interests,
Speaker:the elite cripples the mechanisms of problem-solving,
Speaker:the group’s second selective advantage.
Speaker:In placing their own interests ahead of the group’s,
Speaker:the elites disable the selective advantages of the group,
Speaker:effectively sealing its failure.
Speaker:By monopolizing the group’s surplus resources,
Speaker:the elite builds a buffer against the consequences of its self-service.
Speaker:This buffer allows the elite to remain complacent as the group unravels,
Speaker:confident that their control—so far undiminished--is impervious to
Speaker:consequences.
Speaker:The very success of the group in storing surpluses for the elite to monopolize
Speaker:feeds the illusion that the system can easily sustain the elite’s pillage and
Speaker:suppression of corrective problem-solving.
Speaker:The elite’s complacent confidence and suppression of dissent reinforces an
Speaker:unfounded faith that past solutions will resolve current crises.
Speaker:This confidence leads to catastrophically poor decision-making when applying
Speaker:past solutions deepen the crisis.
Speaker:The selective pressures on the leadership change as the focus shifts from
Speaker:serving the group’s shared interests to serving the interests of the elite.
Speaker:When serving the group was the primary selective pressure,
Speaker:successful leadership required a focus on maintaining cohesion via consensus
Speaker:and limiting the resources allotted to any special interest.
Speaker:This required a moral foundation of civic virtue that rewarded the leadership
Speaker:for putting self-interest and factional interests below those of the group.
Speaker:But if the leadership fails to solve the problems of scarcity for all members,
Speaker:the leadership is either replaced or the group unravels,
Speaker:for just as there are selective pressures on individuals,
Speaker:leaders and species,
Speaker:there are selective pressures on cooperative arrangements.
Speaker:Those which solve the problems of scarcity,
Speaker:distribution and cooperation in ways that serve the shared interests of the
Speaker:members will have consequential advantages over individuals without a
Speaker:cooperative arrangement and groups weakened by internal conflicts and poor
Speaker:problem-solving mechanisms.
Speaker:Groups that emerge with higher levels of cohesion,
Speaker:leadership and adaptability are better prepared to face future crises,
Speaker:while the groups that are weakened will collapse in the next crisis.
Speaker:These selective dynamics are scale-invariant - they apply to the entire
Speaker:spectrum of cooperative organizations from hunter-gatherer groups to tribes to
Speaker:empires.
Speaker:Just as groups that fail to solve the problems of scarcity,
Speaker:distribution and cooperation dissolve,
Speaker:so too do empires.
Speaker:These dynamics also apply to all ideologies and forms of governance;
Speaker:they apply equally to feudal,
Speaker:theocratic,
Speaker:socialist and capitalist arrangements.
Speaker:Any of these ideological constructs can succeed or fail in solving the core
Speaker:problems of scarcity,
Speaker:cohesion and cooperation.
Speaker:It is not the ideology or form of governance that is successful or
Speaker:unsuccessful;
Speaker:it is the arrangement’s dynamic balancing of the inherent tensions described
Speaker:above to maintain a fair distribution of resources and sacrifices that is
Speaker:successful or unsuccessful.
Speaker:The Importance Of Cooperation.
Speaker:In terms of species-level selective pressure,
Speaker:humanity’s core selective advantage as a species is cooperation,
Speaker:which requires communication,
Speaker:coordinating group activities,
Speaker:and the sharing of decision-making,
Speaker:risks and resources.
Speaker:These cooperative tools generate problem-solving advantages no individual can
Speaker:match.
Speaker:The advantages of belonging to a group are so great that humans developed
Speaker:innate abilities to optimize cooperation - the ability to learn languages,
Speaker:interpret facial expressions and body language,
Speaker:formulate abstract ideas,
Speaker:plan actions,
Speaker:etc.
Speaker:But the wide variety of individual skills and characteristics are also a
Speaker:selective advantage,
Speaker:as innovations and skills developed by an individual can be shared with others,
Speaker:enhancing the survival prospects of the entire group.
Speaker:The Importance Of Agency.
Speaker:As noted previously,
Speaker:each individual has an innate drive for agency.
Speaker:Agency is not merely the pursuit of individual self-interest;
Speaker:it includes serving one’s interests via membership in a successful
Speaker:cooperative arrangement.
Speaker:The group that generates the highest individual commitments to shared purpose,
Speaker:willingness to sacrifice,
Speaker:esprit de corps,
Speaker:innovation,
Speaker:effort and leadership in its members has much better odds of providing each
Speaker:member with resources than a group with lackluster levels of loyalty and effort.
Speaker:As social primates,
Speaker:humans have an innate template for hierarchical organization in which a few
Speaker:individuals are granted authority in exchange for the superiority of their
Speaker:leadership,
Speaker:a tradeoff which benefits all members.
Speaker:While the recent history of totalitarian regimes has led many to focus on the
Speaker:potential for a Strong Leader to grab power via intimidation and violence,
Speaker:as a general rule leadership is granted to those who the group members feel
Speaker:will best serve their own interests via belonging to a successful group.
Speaker:Humans are willing to accept a disproportionate distribution of resources in
Speaker:exchange for leadership that benefits all members.
Speaker:This manifests in many different ways,
Speaker:from the leader sharing private wealth in communal feasts to the authority of
Speaker:pirate captains being contingent on the crew’s assessment of which individual
Speaker:is best prepared to lead the ship to success.
Speaker:In modern societies,
Speaker:corporate heads are granted extraordinary wealth in return for generating
Speaker:wealth for shareholders and employees with stock options.
Speaker:The Importance Of Conflict Resolution And Fairness.
Speaker:All the tensions inherent in cooperation require constant resolution.
Speaker:Conflicts that cannot be resolved threaten group cohesion,
Speaker:a loss of cooperation that reduces the odds of each individual’s survival.
Speaker:The human capacity to find resolutions that preserve the advantages of both
Speaker:belonging to a group and maintaining individual agency is also a core selective
Speaker:advantage.
Speaker:A key element in this human capacity for problem-solving via conflict
Speaker:resolution is humanity’s innate sensitivity to fairness - if the process
Speaker:excludes some members,
Speaker:this is immediately understood by all as being unfair,
Speaker:for each member is expected to devote equal effort and make the same sacrifices
Speaker:on behalf of the group.
Speaker:If one set of members is denied agency in the group’s decisions,
Speaker:this severs the bonds of shared purpose and sacrifice and destabilizes the
Speaker:entire construct of cooperation - why should I work as hard and make the same
Speaker:sacrifices on behalf of the group as everyone else but be denied a say in the
Speaker:group’s decisions—decisions that directly impact my interests?
Speaker:Human sensitivity to unfairness is broad-spectrum and includes the free-rider
Speaker:problem (physically able members shirking their duties but taking their full
Speaker:share of the group’s efforts),
Speaker:collusion (a small group conspires to monopolize group assets for their private
Speaker:gain—what we call monopolies and cartels)
Speaker:and deception (leaders making baseless claims to support their authority,
Speaker:etc.).
Speaker:Fairness boils down to the balance of effort and sacrifice made on behalf of
Speaker:the group’s shared interests and the resources and agency provided to each
Speaker:member.
Speaker:If the efforts and sacrifices made are equal to those of other members but the
Speaker:resources and agency provided are a sliver of what was granted to other
Speaker:members,
Speaker:this unfairness undermines the stability of the core asset of the group -
Speaker:cooperation.
Speaker:A leader who makes extraordinary sacrifices on behalf of the group’s shared
Speaker:interests but who receives nothing more than those who contributed as little as
Speaker:possible is also alive to the profoundly unfair asymmetry of effort and reward.
Speaker:If a faction enforces an unfair distribution of resources on the rest of the
Speaker:group,
Speaker:the stability of the arrangement is at risk,
Speaker:for humans will only tolerate unfairness for so long.
Speaker:If a tyrannical leader gains enough power to siphon off the group’s efforts,
Speaker:the tyrant may be found one morning with a slit throat,
Speaker:or will awaken to an empty village as the exploited have deserted.
Speaker:This decision to support or abandon the leadership (and ultimately,
Speaker:the group itself)
Speaker:is the consent of the governed.
Speaker:If consent is granted,
Speaker:then members are expected to make equal efforts on the group’s behalf.
Speaker:If consent is withdrawn,
Speaker:the group’s collection of resources falter and there is less available for
Speaker:the membership.
Speaker:This generates a feedback loop of fewer benefits for the remaining membership,
Speaker:which reduces participation,
Speaker:loyalty and consent,
Speaker:which further reduces the benefits of membership.
Speaker:When consent is withdrawn,
Speaker:if no new leadership arrangement can be reached,
Speaker:then the group dissolves and individuals seek out or organize some other
Speaker:arrangement.
Speaker:The core mechanics of resolving differing ideas about how best to proceed are
Speaker:rooted in the structure of cooperation - communal decision-making is a
Speaker:transparent (i.e.,
Speaker:public)
Speaker:competition of proposals in which those claiming authority are held accountable
Speaker:for the success or failure of their decisions.
Speaker:This process is well-served by a wide variety of opinions (what we call
Speaker:variability)
Speaker:and feedback generated by experimentation and monitoring results.
Speaker:Dissent serves the interest of the group by reducing the potential for
Speaker:disastrously poor decisions gaining passive consensus.
Speaker:These mechanics generate dynamic stability (also known as dynamic equilibrium)
Speaker:as this (quite often messy and contentious)
Speaker:process of resolution leverages the group’s coherence of shared purpose,
Speaker:sacrifice and resolve to adapt to changing circumstances.
Speaker:If the process is open and fair,
Speaker:dissenters will either consent to the judgement of the group or leave to seek
Speaker:another arrangement.
Speaker:There is an inherent tension in every structure that distributes resources in
Speaker:scarcity crises - each individual wants a full measure today and the security
Speaker:of a full measure tomorrow,
Speaker:while the group must maintain its own coherence to serve the shared interests
Speaker:of the membership.
Speaker:If the group fails to maintain its organizational integrity,
Speaker:it splinters into competing factions that pursue self-interest at the expense
Speaker:of the group’s problem-solving structure (i.e.,
Speaker:it loses coherence and unravels).
Speaker:If one faction gains the upper hand and takes a larger share at the expense of
Speaker:the group,
Speaker:the value of the arrangement to everyone outside that faction erodes.
Speaker:The group unravels because it is no longer serving the shared interests of all
Speaker:members.
Speaker:The irony of this intrinsic tension between self-interest and the maintaining
Speaker:the coherence of the group is that once an elite control the distribution of
Speaker:resources to benefit themselves at the expense of other members,
Speaker:the group unravels and no longer provides resources for the elite to plunder.
Speaker:The elites’ dominance is always relatively short-lived because their
Speaker:dominance destroys the group’s ability to solve problems,
Speaker:for by taking control of the distribution of resources,
Speaker:the elite cripples the mechanisms of dynamic stability that enable the group to
Speaker:maintain coherence.
Speaker:The elite’s maximization of self-interest—grabbing more than their fair
Speaker:share of resources and transferring all the sacrifices onto
Speaker:others—destabilizes the group and the elite end up with much less than they
Speaker:would have had if they’d shared the sacrifices needed to weather the crisis
Speaker:of scarcity.
Speaker:Their greed (i.e.,
Speaker:maximizing their private gains),
Speaker:though successful when resources are abundant,
Speaker:is ultimately self-destructive.
Speaker:The second irony is that elites that are limited in how much they can grab of
Speaker:the group’s resources actually fare better than elites that gain control of
Speaker:the group’s distribution of resources.
Speaker:The elite that grabs power unravels the group which is the source of its wealth.
Speaker:The elite with limited power retains its wealth because the group’s
Speaker:problem-solving stability is conserved by the group’s limits on elites.
Speaker:Scarcity is a crisis few groups survive,
Speaker:since the inherent tensions between individual members’ self-interest and the
Speaker:group’s own interests rise once abundance transitions into scarcity.
Speaker:The key to surviving the shrinking of the pie of resources is shared sacrifice,
Speaker:an essential element in the cooperative glue of any group,
Speaker:which I break down into the constituent dynamics of social cohesion,
Speaker:moral legitimacy and civic virtue.
Speaker:I’ll discuss these in depth in subsequent chapters.
Speaker:When the pie of resources is expanding,
Speaker:as long as each member is receiving more than they did in the past (i.e.,
Speaker:absolute gains),
Speaker:the calculation of fairness becomes relative to the improvements in others’
Speaker:shares - did someone else receive a larger,
Speaker:undeserved share?
Speaker:The core issue in distributing group resources is how much extra is given to
Speaker:the leaders for their service to the group.
Speaker:The calculation of how much each member has gained under their leadership in
Speaker:return for the leaders’ larger share is the key to group cohesion or disunion.
Speaker:If the leaders’ share increases while the members’ shares stagnate,
Speaker:the leaders’ share is perceived as unfair because they didn’t earn the
Speaker:larger share by improving the lot of the membership.
Speaker:If the leadership expands the group’s pie of resources,
Speaker:then their share will expand.
Speaker:If the leadership takes a larger share without expanding the pie,
Speaker:then their larger share is correctly perceived as coming at the expense of
Speaker:other members.
Speaker:Since the group’s cohesion as a problem-solving arrangement depends on the
Speaker:group serving the shared interests of the members,
Speaker:a leadership that takes a larger share at the expense of other members severely
Speaker:undermines trust in the group’s ability to serve shared interests rather than
Speaker:the interests of an elite leadership.
Speaker:This innate tension between the shares granted to leaders and the members’
Speaker:shares increase during times of scarcity,
Speaker:as the leaders will naturally be tempted to use their authority to keep their
Speaker:share unchanged while the resources distributed to members decline sharply.
Speaker:To those seeing their share shrink,
Speaker:the leaders haven’t performed well enough to deserve a larger share of the
Speaker:shrinking pie,
Speaker:and so the cooperative glue of the group weakens.
Speaker:Why should I sacrifice when the leaders who have failed to provide for the
Speaker:group sacrifice nothing?
Speaker:The interest of the group is to maintain the cohesion of cooperation,
Speaker:the source of the group’s selective advantages.
Speaker:Cooperation in times of scarcity requires not just shared work but shared
Speaker:sacrifice.
Speaker:Members make the sacrifices because they feel the group serves their interests
Speaker:more successfully than striking out on their own.
Speaker:Leaders are granted a larger share in return for placing the group’s
Speaker:interests above their own.
Speaker:In scarcity crises,
Speaker:the innate tension between their own interests and the interests of the group
Speaker:is magnified.
Speaker:The limiting mechanism on leader exploitation of authority is the consent of
Speaker:the governed,
Speaker:which can be withdrawn.
Speaker:Enlightened leaders who understand this critical role of shared sacrifice in
Speaker:eras of scarcity will make larger sacrifices than other members.
Speaker:This is in recognition that the sacrifice of individual gain on behalf of the
Speaker:group strengthens the group’s loyalty to the leader and the group’s odds of
Speaker:success - the less taken by leaders,
Speaker:the greater the resources left to distribute to members.
Speaker:A critical factor in successful leadership is this ability to look beyond
Speaker:immediate personal gain and recognize that the leader’s interests are best
Speaker:served by strengthening the group,
Speaker:which is the foundation of the leader’s own security.
Speaker:Weakening the group for short-term gain works against the long-term interests
Speaker:of the leader.
Speaker:But too often,
Speaker:given this innate tension between short-term and long-term gain,
Speaker:leaders give in to the temptation to sacrifice shared interests to serve their
Speaker:own interests.
Speaker:They might do so by promising supporters a larger share in the future,
Speaker:or by silencing or punishing those who resist the leader’s power grab.
Speaker:Each of these strategies further weakens members’ trust,
Speaker:loyalty and willingness to sacrifice on behalf of the group—the key elements
Speaker:of group cohesion.
Speaker:The diversion of scarce resources into heavy-handed enforcement (costly in
Speaker:terms of resources required)
Speaker:further reduces the resources distributed to members.
Speaker:The second key dynamic in crises of scarcity (the first being the size of the
Speaker:leaders’ share)
Speaker:is the group’s ability to correct the excesses of leaders who place their own
Speaker:interests above those of the group.
Speaker:If the leaders expand their share beyond what the group can sustain,
Speaker:the group will collapse unless it has mechanisms to limit or replace the greedy
Speaker:leadership.
Speaker:The group’s success as a problem-solving arrangement that serves the shared
Speaker:interests of all members is thus dependent on its ability to limit the share of
Speaker:resources taken by elites and its ability to limit the authority of leaders to
Speaker:force members to sacrifice their own interests not for the group but for the
Speaker:private interests of an elite.
Speaker:To Summarize Our Exploration So Far -
Speaker:Cooperation is humanity’s core evolutionary advantage.
Speaker:This requires being a member of a group that solves the problems of scarcity,
Speaker:distribution and cooperation in ways that serve the shared interests of the
Speaker:members.
Speaker:Human variability grants some individuals superior leadership abilities and the
Speaker:ambition to seek authority.
Speaker:In exchange for applying their abilities to serve the group’s shared
Speaker:interests,
Speaker:the leadership is granted a larger share of the group’s resources.
Speaker:This authority and a larger share of resources is granted by the consent of the
Speaker:governed,
Speaker:which can be withdrawn if the leadership fails to serve the shared interests of
Speaker:the group.
Speaker:As circumstances change,
Speaker:different opinions about the best solutions arise and conflicts must be
Speaker:resolved.
Speaker:This process of resolution and problem-solving requires the mechanisms of
Speaker:adaptability and dynamic stability - open competition of proposed solutions,
Speaker:transparent decision-making,
Speaker:accountability of the leadership,
Speaker:corrective feedback,
Speaker:and the variability of dissent and experimentation.
Speaker:The group’s structure and culture (what I term the social ontology,
Speaker:which I will explore in following chapters)
Speaker:must place limits on the temptation of the leadership elite to use its
Speaker:authority to pursue its self-interest at the expense of the group.
Speaker:If an elite gains control of the distribution of the group’s resources,
Speaker:the temptation to expand the elite’s share results in the elite’s outsized
Speaker:share exceeding what the group’s resources can sustain.
Speaker:The temptation to suppress opposition results in the destruction of the
Speaker:mechanisms required for successful adaptation (i.e.,
Speaker:problem-solving)
Speaker:and dynamic stability - competition,
Speaker:transparency,
Speaker:accountability,
Speaker:feedback and dissent (i.e.,
Speaker:variability).
Speaker:Once these mechanisms have been disabled,
Speaker:the group can no longer limit the elite’s parasitic excesses or solve
Speaker:problems cooperatively.
Speaker:The core selective advantages of the group have been lost.
Speaker:Since the elite’s expanding share comes at the expense of the group’s
Speaker:shared resources,
Speaker:this is rightly perceived as unfair,
Speaker:for it transfers sacrifice and risk to the members.
Speaker:The elite’s unsustainable share of resources and its suppression of dissent
Speaker:bleed the group of resources and adaptive capacity.
Speaker:These dynamics are magnified in crises of scarcity in which the group’s pie
Speaker:of resources shrinks.
Speaker:As the elite enforces its outsized share and doubles-down on its suppression of
Speaker:dissent,
Speaker:the advantages of belonging to the group disappear along with trust in the
Speaker:leadership.
Speaker:Rather than continue making sacrifices to benefit the elite,
Speaker:members cease contributing or abandon the group,
Speaker:which then collapses under the crushing weight of a parasitic,
Speaker:exploitive,
Speaker:oppressive elite.
Speaker:Rather than serve as an integral part of the cooperative arrangement’s
Speaker:problem-solving,
Speaker:the elite’s dominance has become a systemic problem which neither the group
Speaker:nor the elite can resolve.
Speaker:The only possible outcome is collapse of the arrangement.
Speaker:Note that these dynamics are scale-invariant - they function in small
Speaker:hunter-gatherer groups,
Speaker:tribes,
Speaker:city-states,
Speaker:nation-states and empires.
Speaker:As noted earlier,
Speaker:they are also ideologically invariant - they operate in every ideological
Speaker:flavor of state organization and every form of government.
Speaker:States Need Resource Surpluses To Succeed.
Speaker:We cannot understand the nation-state as a problem-solving structure until we
Speaker:grasp that all such formal arrangements are luxuries funded by surpluses of
Speaker:resources - the essentials of food,
Speaker:energy and fresh water (what I call the Few resources due to their recurring
Speaker:scarcity)
Speaker:as well as minerals,
Speaker:building materials and other tangibles of civilization drawn from natural
Speaker:capital,
Speaker:i.e.,
Speaker:the planet's reserves of natural resources.
Speaker:As the scale of surpluses increases,
Speaker:the size and complexity of the formal arrangement increases accordingly.
Speaker:When resources are meager and intermittent,
Speaker:the group’s surplus cannot support even a single leader who no longer has to
Speaker:work gathering food.
Speaker:As surpluses expand,
Speaker:specialized leadership can arise to oversee the collection and distribution of
Speaker:surpluses.
Speaker:As humans require a minimum of the Few resources to survive,
Speaker:every socio-economic arrangement,
Speaker:from tribes to empires,
Speaker:arises as a problem-solving structure to the challenge of how to gather enough
Speaker:resources and distribute them to sustain the populace and blunt recurring
Speaker:scarcities.
Speaker:Arrangements that fail this challenge dissolve and are replaced by a new
Speaker:arrangement which realigns distribution with (a)
Speaker:what resources can be sustainably gathered and reliably stored,
Speaker:and (b)
Speaker:humanity’s innate desire for fairness and agency - control of one's choices,
Speaker:a voice in the public sphere and an economic stake in the system.
Speaker:The nation-state—referred to here as the state—is one such arrangement,
Speaker:a problem-solving organizational solution.
Speaker:The centralized hierarchy of the state arose and has endured because it has
Speaker:been an adaptable and effective solution to the problem of managing the
Speaker:collection and distribution of resources,
Speaker:capital and agency.
Speaker:But there is nothing pre-ordained about the future success of the state as a
Speaker:problem-solving structure.
Speaker:Human history is an adjunct of natural selection,
Speaker:and evolution is not teleological - evolution does not follow a pre-ordained
Speaker:path to a goal.
Speaker:Rather,
Speaker:natural selection is contingent on semi-random mutations (i.e.,
Speaker:variations)
Speaker:arising and being selected as advantageous in the present conditions.
Speaker:Grand Strategy presumes the state is an eternal structure,
Speaker:but it only exists as long as it is the best available solution.
Speaker:Once the state itself becomes the problem,
Speaker:natural selection will replace it with more effective,
Speaker:adaptable variants.
Speaker:This has been
Speaker:Global Crisis,
Speaker:National Renewal:
Speaker:A (Revolutionary) Grand Strategy for the United States By Charles Hugh Smith, narrated by russell newton.
