04/13/2026
I have to admit that the rubbernecking side of me is amused that pretty much every scenario myself, my associates, and the Zeitgeist Movement amplified 15 years ago is coming true.
The cyclical consumption-growth basis of markets will continue to deteriorate the entire planetary ecosystem while distorting human values.
The ultimate contradiction of market economics, which is cost efficiency leading to the replacement of human labor by automation, which simultaneously alienates purchasing power, is firmly established.
Socioeconomic inequality, which is a market function, continues to increase its divide globally, with more and more going to fewer and fewer, and less and less going to the majority.
The only topic of discussion that was overridden was the state of the hydrocarbon economy, which was based on traditional levels of extraction. Peak oil was proven true in that context. It was fostered, but the drunken addiction of the world to this destructive resource was able to skirt around it through increasingly toxic technology.
And as far as the rise of global instability and warfare, well, every single major country is arming itself to the teeth, preparing for what could be the final battle as everything else falls apart. The United States isn’t pitching a $1.5 trillion defense budget for no reason. And the rise of misplaced technology in the form of artificial intelligence and robotics is going to make everything increasingly interesting on the warfare front.
Beyond that, I will add that the activist industrial complex is nothing but a feedback loop for personal and institutional financial sustainability, which will continue to accomplish nothing because it is not aware of its own flaws and it does not focus on the root cause. It cannot, because the emotionality inherent in it means everyone is a hypocrite.
However, on the other side of the equation, we do have the tools and means to turn everything around. We just do not have the sociology necessary, nor the reinforced incentives, to do so, because market economics continues to be the foundation of global society, and until that changes, we are all dead.
