Credit: @katiepatrickhello.

Wrong way world

From the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis with its nuclear war close call, which happened around my 10th birthday, the insanity of piling up weapons of mass destruction has recurrently come to the foreground. That was only one of many close brushes with nuclear extermination. At no time has this madness been more apparent than now, with the rise in great power tensions thrusting nuclear powers against each other in conflicts, some very hot. When our technologies to destroy each other are improving all the time, the logic is pursuit of peaceful relations. The world is moving in the opposite direction.

From the Limits to Growth studies in the 1970s to the emergence of the ever intensifying climate crisis and documented breaching of multiple planetary boundaries, it has long been obvious that the human species is ecologically overshooting the limits of our planetary home. We have had warnings for decades, but continue to roll down this dead-end road. It is hard to envision a future where we do not confront deep disruption of natural and social ecosystems.

The 1980s saw the rise of neoliberalism under Reagan and Thatcher, reversing a long-term trend toward greater economic equality, spurring the emergence of the billionaire class and the widest economic gap in modern history. In 2020 one individual possessed over $100 billion in net worth. Now there are 16. Over that time U.S. billionaire wealth has increased 88% . The role of the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, as a kind of shadow president under the incoming Trump Administration is a bold underscore for the consolidating power of oligarchy.

Another side of that picture is the increasing concentration of corporate power due to mergers that have placed industry after industry under the control of a handful or less of corporate giants. Food, energy, media, finance, healthcare, “defense,” to name just a few. This piece contains an alarming rundown. Multiple studies show the connection between booming corporate profits and inflation. The term “greedflation” has been coined to describe the phenomenon.

The common thread that runs through the polycrisis is the increasing concentration of power in fewer and fewer hands. Massive economic and political institutions and super-wealthy individuals are amassing more and more power unto themselves, serving their own interests at the expense of the common good, leaving most of us out and throwing more under the bus all the time. The rise of AI and robotics furthers this concentration of power with the replacement of people by machines.

People powerlessness

Most of us sense we have little power in the system. This was validated by a

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