We do have a precedent to Trump and MAGA in Mao's Cultural Revolution. The techniques are more sophisticated but the goals are eerily similar: Attack elites (expertise) to eliminate or at least disarm those who can challenge your power. Simultaneously convince the "commoners" that this attack is in their interest, and the tools to spread such propaganda have grown enormously. The underlying requirement is that the vast majority of commoners have little or no appreciation of where all the good stuff comes from, i.e., everything from energy to food on supermarket shelves to modern medicine, so we take it all for granted. The new elite (Musk being the poster child) are taking full advantage of these disconnects, and trying to widen them through control of new media. Certainly there is bloat and overshoot in the current regime but I think these yawning disconnects, a symptom of Tainter's energy-complexity spiral, is the most important change driver. Sadly, if the next elite replacement cycle does occur, it will take the checks and balances of US democracy with it as collateral damage.
The tools and results of Mao’s cultural revolution looked a lot more like the 20s wokeness than maga, and maga doesn’t have nearly the cultural power Mao had
it comes from bombing middle east, forcing austerity loans on rl salvador farmers, installing central banks in foreign countries, doing regime changes and funding local despots. maybe you should ask westerners if they like being part of the golden billion. great job humans good job booming. when diseal fertilizer and minerals are not accessible say bye bye to 9 billion humans
ask the entirety of united kingdom population to self euthanize since they depleted their coal reserves and oil and gas and depend on imports. usa only exports because they can’t refine it all and you need to keep international peace to enjoy a first standard of living besides the geopolitical wars necessary to keep the unintelligent populations down and poor to curb their growth rates and consumption rates ultimately we will all succumb
no it is a law of thermodynamics. all embodied energy forms will maximize dissipation of energy. recycling is not possible. geological processes cannot accelerate or be controlled by energetic fluxes to recuperate lost material that is not in a usable configuration. even if we collectively hold hands and only kept a small and intelligent and responsible population we would invariably exhaust the minerals.
My only quibble is that the scientific establishment needs as much a trim as the political establishment. Like you, I spent a lifetime in the lab. Did some good things.
I think that the scientific establishment as a whole needs to stop doing "new" research and go back and do a whole shitload of "reproducing published results". The overproduction of erstwhile "scientists" needing to put out publications will call for a serious retrenchment and a time of double checking and debunking.
It is what I said: the scientific establishment badly needs "Dogeing" -- but at the same time we can't risk losing more than a century of previous work.
Sounds like we are talking in parallel then. Agreement abounds. I think that maybe the publications themselves need to be made "safe" and available. I am not at all certain how this will be done. Maybe something like the "internet archive" for all of the studies made and published so that they can't be disappeared.
I will ponder this. Maybe those stacks of "nature" and PNAS will be useful in the future.
Maybe it is time to start re-thinking about what we have been doing to public libraries.
Yes, baring maybe a few historical exceptions, only when the elites are divided (that is when there are elites and counter-elites) a revolution can succeed.
But as long as the elites manage to stay united, popular revolts are usually crushed.
Actually, I found Peter Turchin's works very convincing on the matter.
Especially the idea that when the economic system is undergoing a contraction, the upper part of the commoners try as hard as they can to become part of the elites (or at least their children) through education (while, of course, the lower part of the elite do all they can not to become commoners)
The result is an over-production of the elites due to a far greater number of graduates than society needs.
For as long as possible, the state administrations does what they can to absorb as many graduates as possible, aggravating their already difficult financial situation*.
And it's often these educated but disillusioned students and graduates who tend to form counter-elites and then associate themselves with a faction of the impoverished population.
At this point, violence is just one step away.
--
(*) Actually, the various DEI programs that were so fashionable in the US not so long ago can very much be seen as a part of this process as the aim (or result) was for the administrations to hire people from the middle/upper class who, as a matter of fact, had only graduated in DEI management.
Of course, some elite over-production happens in other countries. Graduates unemployment is (once again in its very long history) becoming a very serious problem in China even if it might be addressed quite differently.
True. At present, though, there are two different elites in the US: one is the old elite, still based on fossil power. The other, is based on internet, web control, AI, and the like. The second will probably crush the first. But, as usual, the people will be crushed, too!
Somehow, both elites depends on fossil fuel, directly or indirectly. Beside, Trump announced quite often that he was in favor of a more intensive exploitation of oil fields ("Drill, baby, drill") so I don't know if the oil industry really supported Biden/Harris.
It's more like the old elite depends on importation of goods as cheap as possible and of international royalties on trade marks. So they are quite afraid of any questioning of the free trade dogma and any public relation issues.
While somehow, the news elites, who depends mostly on IT, whose products dominate the market and cannot be taxed the same way, saw an opening with Trump.
Yes, it is more complicated than that. The old and the new elite are somewhat compenetrated; but I think the fossil one will be unceremoniously dumped if the Revolution succeeds. Just like the Mensheviks and the Bolsheviks. They were allied during the revolution, then the Bolsheviks got rid of the Mensheviks.
Here is something I read this morning about the mapping of the vast Federal payment software systems by Musk's Forensic Accounting AI. Finally something useful.
This is like Germany's motorized armor overrunning France, if I may make that analogy, which I think is appropriate.
Also, a new social contract by rising populist elites is typically designed to be better for working people, as their alliance is needed by the rising elites. FDR did this.
Yes, there are exceptions this, such as in the USA under the Jacksonians. Unlike traditional elite transitions, where power shifts between factions within a narrow ruling class, the Jacksonians actively worked to dismantle concentrated power structures and expand the base of political and economic decision making. Their destruction of the Second Bank of the United States, their push for local financial control, and their resistance to monopolistic structures undermined a centralized ruling elite and redistributed decision-making across a much broader and more diverse class of participants, including small business owners, local bankers, farmers, and professionals. This fundamentally changed the nature of governance, making it more participatory and less dominated by a singular elite faction.
If elites were always simply replaced rather than structurally diminished, then the Jacksonian era would have resulted in just another small ruling class stepping into power. But that’s not what happened. Instead, the Jacksonians shattered the concentrated power nexus of Northeastern finance, the Southern planter aristocracy, and London capital, which had previously exercised disproportionate control over the American economy. If there was an elite under the Jacksonian system, it was significantly larger, more regionally distributed, and less capable of acting in unison to exert control. This diffusion of power and decision-making shows that elite structures are not always a constant, they can be expanded, fragmented, and weakened through deliberate political and economic actions. The essay's premise ignores these dynamics and assumes that centralized elite dominance is inevitable, when history proves otherwise.
Here’s my version of a mind-sized model: “Liquidity” is used in economics to refer to cash flow. If you apply the metaphor of the hydrologic cycle (rain falls/soaks into the ground/plants grow/excess runs off/evaporation/rainfall) what we have today is a drought: the money evaporates into the clouds and only trickles down.
One elite group is always replaced by another elite group. The new elite group is just like the old elite group. New boss same as the old boss. Zion Don ain’t no savior
As a 'scientist' i can authoritatively say that any more research is not necessary. We know what causes ill health, in humans and the planet. We know we must stop burning fossil fuels and use less energy altogether. We know we are approaching several planetary tipping points, that billons are going to starve in the next few decades.
Trump is defunding public spending, but corporates are continuing a pace with tech and new drugs only available to the rich few.
Either way defunding science is not the end of the world. That'll be the climate crisis.
Very interesting analysis of the situation within our ruling elites from what I am assuming is a moderate old style liberal perspective, think FDR, Truman, Kennedy. You lost me with ‘MAGA being influenced by a nasty streak of violence and racism,’ but otherwise really interesting. I’ve forwarded this some Dissident Right contacts of mine for their perspectives.
I find the continuing accusations of “racism” to the MAGA crowd both ignorant and childish. Opining in favor of merit is not “racist;” it’s the opposite. If the results don’t meet your “needs” for distribution of opportunity and wealth by immutable characteristics, you might want to re-examine your needs.
What intrigues most about people laying this (and similar) accusations is that, had merit NOT been the guidepost for the rise of civilization, civilization wouldn’t have risen, and no one would be reading your work on papyrus, as very few would be literate and printing never invented.
The point of DEI is not to hire unqualified people based on skin color or national origin, but to hire the best qualified without bias. There are those (I suspect elites pursuing a divide and conquer strategy) who deliberately misstate this. Objecting to this makes MAGA look like they define merit as having white skin, thus the accusations of racism.
There was once a revolution that was messy, but a clear net positive for human thriving- the American Revolution. On its surface, MAGA pays homage to this revolution and holds up its symbols and principles as objects of reverence.
What remains to be seen is the extent to which these principles are truly believed, properly understood, and applied in practice. If the MAGA leadership can genuinely channel the spirit of the American Revolution, the movement will be a success. If they’re just exploiting the symbols of the revolution to solidify power, they will fail.
What the Democrat opposition needs to do now is abandon its totalitarian woke ideology and idealist/imperialist foreign policy and reorient itself towards American classical liberalism and realism. Currently, they’re in no position to hold MAGA to traditional American principles because they have spent so many decades now attacking those principles.
When the party that believes free speech is an outdated idea cries about attacks on “Our Democracy,” it rings hollow. They need to completely clean house and reinvent themselves into a loyal opposition committed to traditional American values. Though unfortunately I don’t see that happening in the current environment.
I’d doubt that shale production is a good barometer all on its own. We aren’t as precarious on gas prices now as we were during the OPEC crisis, much less a petro state like the USSR
The only institutional racism and violence is on the Left. Calling Trump “unhinged” for what he is trying to do for the good of America is so fake and gay, I’m not sure there’s even a word for it.
I would like to propose a complementary approach to using thermodynamics to explain systems. It relies on the classic Boltzmann definition of entropy where:
- High entropy: A lot of microstates compatible with a given macrostate.
- Low entropy: Few microstates compatible with a given macrostate.
I don’t need formulas for what I want to explain.
In thermodynamics the macrostates are described by magnitudes like temperature or pressure. To extend it to systems I need to extend the definition of entropy. So a given macrostate would consist on a certain whole system working mode.
A microchip would be an example of a very low entropy sub-system. Milions of transistors etched and printed on an almost monocrystal silicon block. With micro or even nano-metric precision. Any small detail out of place and the system no longer works as it is meant to. I would call it an extremely low entropy island: the microchip.
Thermodynamics applies. To get all this entropy out of the chip we require the system to pump it out using a lot of energy. Or better. We know “using energy” is a somehow fallacious statement. “Using energy” means getting low entropy energy and degrade it to a higher entropy version. Diffused heat being the highest entropy energy version of them all. (as you use, as a simplification, in your transcripted talk "Peak Oil, Entropy, and Stoic Philosophy").
So, to get these low-entropy islands to work we need an entropy pump that can’t help generating more entropy that is sent elsewhere. Call it “waste” or “pollution”, to use the terms in the models you are showing.
In the microchip example, TSMC (and its subcontractors) would be a gigantic entropy pump.
Many technological “advances” end-up providing wonderful low-entropy machines, so they can be analysed under this same lens.
Could we use this concept with bureaucracy and extractive elites proliferation? To some extent I think we can. It requires just analysing the system hierarchy-distributed duality. Let’s say we have a system that works in a distributed fashion. Lots of small arrangements between individual parts, without much communication between big blocks. The whole works well enough, despite the many local errors and inefficiencies because of lack of coordination. At some point someone detects these problems and comes up with tow main ideas:
- What if we try to establish some coordination procedures to improve efficiency?
- What if we try to train people and share information so that all the individuals are well equipped to perform?
It’s the beginning of elite creation. The underlying ideas are so appealing that it seems almost impossible to argue against them. And yet…
I don’t want to go into the discussion about how much education, regulation, governance is useful, how much is patological, and how the system misregulates it.
This newly created elite layers may make the system work smoother and more efficiently, but small mistakes or corruption at these layers may also cause major disasters. Just as what happens in a microchip. So we could consider these elites as “low-entropy islands” of the system. They require very low entropy to function well. This low entropy requires pumping more entropy elsewhere.
In a microchip, once the gigantic entropy pump is put into place and working, at least, the low-entropy islands we generate are stable. Yes, a chip is sensitive to radiation messing-up with the atoms and transistors and it might put it out of order. But in general, microchips work quite well for a good time without failure. We cannot say the same about these chip-like institutions and bureaucracies, with all their departments, forms and protocols. Once they are up and running, they seem to be permanently leaking entropy in (errors, corruption, alienation...), that requires constant pumping entropy out, exhausting the whole system. The problems increase as elites areas of power extends.
Commoners vs. Elites, producing vs. non-producing, the working class vs. the idle rich, labor vs. management/capital.
It all boils down to one simple concept: Unchecked unbridled greed will destroy civilization, if not drive us into extinction altogether. Right now, the latter appears to be the increasingly likely scenario.
The assertion in the essay that power is always concentrated within a fixed elite structure, where one group merely replaces another, is not always correct. There are exceptions this, such as in the USA under the Jacksonians. Unlike traditional elite transitions, where power shifts between factions within a narrow ruling class, the Jacksonians actively worked to dismantle concentrated power structures and expand the base of political and economic decision making. Their destruction of the Second Bank of the United States, their push for local financial control, and their resistance to monopolistic structures undermined a centralized ruling elite and redistributed decision-making across a much broader and more diverse class of participants, including small business owners, local bankers, farmers, and professionals. This fundamentally changed the nature of governance, making it more participatory and less dominated by a singular elite faction.
If elites were always simply replaced rather than structurally diminished, then the Jacksonian era would have resulted in just another small ruling class stepping into power. But that’s not what happened. Instead, the Jacksonians shattered the concentrated power nexus of Northeastern finance, the Southern planter aristocracy, and London capital, which had previously exercised disproportionate control over the American economy. If there was an elite under the Jacksonian system, it was significantly larger, more regionally distributed, and less capable of acting in unison to exert control. This diffusion of power and decision-making shows that elite structures are not always a constant, they can be expanded, fragmented, and weakened through deliberate political and economic actions. The essay's premise ignores these dynamics and assumes that centralized elite dominance is inevitable, when history proves otherwise.
We do have a precedent to Trump and MAGA in Mao's Cultural Revolution. The techniques are more sophisticated but the goals are eerily similar: Attack elites (expertise) to eliminate or at least disarm those who can challenge your power. Simultaneously convince the "commoners" that this attack is in their interest, and the tools to spread such propaganda have grown enormously. The underlying requirement is that the vast majority of commoners have little or no appreciation of where all the good stuff comes from, i.e., everything from energy to food on supermarket shelves to modern medicine, so we take it all for granted. The new elite (Musk being the poster child) are taking full advantage of these disconnects, and trying to widen them through control of new media. Certainly there is bloat and overshoot in the current regime but I think these yawning disconnects, a symptom of Tainter's energy-complexity spiral, is the most important change driver. Sadly, if the next elite replacement cycle does occur, it will take the checks and balances of US democracy with it as collateral damage.
Indeed!
The tools and results of Mao’s cultural revolution looked a lot more like the 20s wokeness than maga, and maga doesn’t have nearly the cultural power Mao had
it comes from bombing middle east, forcing austerity loans on rl salvador farmers, installing central banks in foreign countries, doing regime changes and funding local despots. maybe you should ask westerners if they like being part of the golden billion. great job humans good job booming. when diseal fertilizer and minerals are not accessible say bye bye to 9 billion humans
ask the entirety of united kingdom population to self euthanize since they depleted their coal reserves and oil and gas and depend on imports. usa only exports because they can’t refine it all and you need to keep international peace to enjoy a first standard of living besides the geopolitical wars necessary to keep the unintelligent populations down and poor to curb their growth rates and consumption rates ultimately we will all succumb
Your article highlights the problem with human nature, and the problem with human nature is human nature.
I think somebody will do something about that.....
no it is a law of thermodynamics. all embodied energy forms will maximize dissipation of energy. recycling is not possible. geological processes cannot accelerate or be controlled by energetic fluxes to recuperate lost material that is not in a usable configuration. even if we collectively hold hands and only kept a small and intelligent and responsible population we would invariably exhaust the minerals.
Ugo: An excellent piece. Thank you.
My only quibble is that the scientific establishment needs as much a trim as the political establishment. Like you, I spent a lifetime in the lab. Did some good things.
I think that the scientific establishment as a whole needs to stop doing "new" research and go back and do a whole shitload of "reproducing published results". The overproduction of erstwhile "scientists" needing to put out publications will call for a serious retrenchment and a time of double checking and debunking.
It is what I said: the scientific establishment badly needs "Dogeing" -- but at the same time we can't risk losing more than a century of previous work.
Sounds like we are talking in parallel then. Agreement abounds. I think that maybe the publications themselves need to be made "safe" and available. I am not at all certain how this will be done. Maybe something like the "internet archive" for all of the studies made and published so that they can't be disappeared.
I will ponder this. Maybe those stacks of "nature" and PNAS will be useful in the future.
Maybe it is time to start re-thinking about what we have been doing to public libraries.
Yes, baring maybe a few historical exceptions, only when the elites are divided (that is when there are elites and counter-elites) a revolution can succeed.
But as long as the elites manage to stay united, popular revolts are usually crushed.
Actually, I found Peter Turchin's works very convincing on the matter.
Especially the idea that when the economic system is undergoing a contraction, the upper part of the commoners try as hard as they can to become part of the elites (or at least their children) through education (while, of course, the lower part of the elite do all they can not to become commoners)
The result is an over-production of the elites due to a far greater number of graduates than society needs.
For as long as possible, the state administrations does what they can to absorb as many graduates as possible, aggravating their already difficult financial situation*.
And it's often these educated but disillusioned students and graduates who tend to form counter-elites and then associate themselves with a faction of the impoverished population.
At this point, violence is just one step away.
--
(*) Actually, the various DEI programs that were so fashionable in the US not so long ago can very much be seen as a part of this process as the aim (or result) was for the administrations to hire people from the middle/upper class who, as a matter of fact, had only graduated in DEI management.
Of course, some elite over-production happens in other countries. Graduates unemployment is (once again in its very long history) becoming a very serious problem in China even if it might be addressed quite differently.
True. At present, though, there are two different elites in the US: one is the old elite, still based on fossil power. The other, is based on internet, web control, AI, and the like. The second will probably crush the first. But, as usual, the people will be crushed, too!
I'm not so sure it's about really fossil fuel.
Somehow, both elites depends on fossil fuel, directly or indirectly. Beside, Trump announced quite often that he was in favor of a more intensive exploitation of oil fields ("Drill, baby, drill") so I don't know if the oil industry really supported Biden/Harris.
It's more like the old elite depends on importation of goods as cheap as possible and of international royalties on trade marks. So they are quite afraid of any questioning of the free trade dogma and any public relation issues.
While somehow, the news elites, who depends mostly on IT, whose products dominate the market and cannot be taxed the same way, saw an opening with Trump.
Yes, it is more complicated than that. The old and the new elite are somewhat compenetrated; but I think the fossil one will be unceremoniously dumped if the Revolution succeeds. Just like the Mensheviks and the Bolsheviks. They were allied during the revolution, then the Bolsheviks got rid of the Mensheviks.
Here is something I read this morning about the mapping of the vast Federal payment software systems by Musk's Forensic Accounting AI. Finally something useful.
This is like Germany's motorized armor overrunning France, if I may make that analogy, which I think is appropriate.
What next? Good guys or bad guys in 3 years? https://eko.substack.com/p/override
Also, a new social contract by rising populist elites is typically designed to be better for working people, as their alliance is needed by the rising elites. FDR did this.
Yes, there are exceptions this, such as in the USA under the Jacksonians. Unlike traditional elite transitions, where power shifts between factions within a narrow ruling class, the Jacksonians actively worked to dismantle concentrated power structures and expand the base of political and economic decision making. Their destruction of the Second Bank of the United States, their push for local financial control, and their resistance to monopolistic structures undermined a centralized ruling elite and redistributed decision-making across a much broader and more diverse class of participants, including small business owners, local bankers, farmers, and professionals. This fundamentally changed the nature of governance, making it more participatory and less dominated by a singular elite faction.
If elites were always simply replaced rather than structurally diminished, then the Jacksonian era would have resulted in just another small ruling class stepping into power. But that’s not what happened. Instead, the Jacksonians shattered the concentrated power nexus of Northeastern finance, the Southern planter aristocracy, and London capital, which had previously exercised disproportionate control over the American economy. If there was an elite under the Jacksonian system, it was significantly larger, more regionally distributed, and less capable of acting in unison to exert control. This diffusion of power and decision-making shows that elite structures are not always a constant, they can be expanded, fragmented, and weakened through deliberate political and economic actions. The essay's premise ignores these dynamics and assumes that centralized elite dominance is inevitable, when history proves otherwise.
Here’s my version of a mind-sized model: “Liquidity” is used in economics to refer to cash flow. If you apply the metaphor of the hydrologic cycle (rain falls/soaks into the ground/plants grow/excess runs off/evaporation/rainfall) what we have today is a drought: the money evaporates into the clouds and only trickles down.
Remember the song of Pink Floyd: Money is a Gas!
One elite group is always replaced by another elite group. The new elite group is just like the old elite group. New boss same as the old boss. Zion Don ain’t no savior
As a 'scientist' i can authoritatively say that any more research is not necessary. We know what causes ill health, in humans and the planet. We know we must stop burning fossil fuels and use less energy altogether. We know we are approaching several planetary tipping points, that billons are going to starve in the next few decades.
Trump is defunding public spending, but corporates are continuing a pace with tech and new drugs only available to the rich few.
Either way defunding science is not the end of the world. That'll be the climate crisis.
Very interesting analysis of the situation within our ruling elites from what I am assuming is a moderate old style liberal perspective, think FDR, Truman, Kennedy. You lost me with ‘MAGA being influenced by a nasty streak of violence and racism,’ but otherwise really interesting. I’ve forwarded this some Dissident Right contacts of mine for their perspectives.
I find the continuing accusations of “racism” to the MAGA crowd both ignorant and childish. Opining in favor of merit is not “racist;” it’s the opposite. If the results don’t meet your “needs” for distribution of opportunity and wealth by immutable characteristics, you might want to re-examine your needs.
What intrigues most about people laying this (and similar) accusations is that, had merit NOT been the guidepost for the rise of civilization, civilization wouldn’t have risen, and no one would be reading your work on papyrus, as very few would be literate and printing never invented.
The point of DEI is not to hire unqualified people based on skin color or national origin, but to hire the best qualified without bias. There are those (I suspect elites pursuing a divide and conquer strategy) who deliberately misstate this. Objecting to this makes MAGA look like they define merit as having white skin, thus the accusations of racism.
If you actually believe that, there’s no point wasting time with you.
https://substack.com/@jennbudd/note/c-113684268?r=ems0y&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action
Thank God.
:-)
Yes… But the system will collapse with them.
Actually it already has… Welcome to the Technate!
https://open.substack.com/pub/heyslick/p/the-technate-of-north-america
There was once a revolution that was messy, but a clear net positive for human thriving- the American Revolution. On its surface, MAGA pays homage to this revolution and holds up its symbols and principles as objects of reverence.
What remains to be seen is the extent to which these principles are truly believed, properly understood, and applied in practice. If the MAGA leadership can genuinely channel the spirit of the American Revolution, the movement will be a success. If they’re just exploiting the symbols of the revolution to solidify power, they will fail.
What the Democrat opposition needs to do now is abandon its totalitarian woke ideology and idealist/imperialist foreign policy and reorient itself towards American classical liberalism and realism. Currently, they’re in no position to hold MAGA to traditional American principles because they have spent so many decades now attacking those principles.
When the party that believes free speech is an outdated idea cries about attacks on “Our Democracy,” it rings hollow. They need to completely clean house and reinvent themselves into a loyal opposition committed to traditional American values. Though unfortunately I don’t see that happening in the current environment.
I’d doubt that shale production is a good barometer all on its own. We aren’t as precarious on gas prices now as we were during the OPEC crisis, much less a petro state like the USSR
The only institutional racism and violence is on the Left. Calling Trump “unhinged” for what he is trying to do for the good of America is so fake and gay, I’m not sure there’s even a word for it.
I would like to propose a complementary approach to using thermodynamics to explain systems. It relies on the classic Boltzmann definition of entropy where:
- High entropy: A lot of microstates compatible with a given macrostate.
- Low entropy: Few microstates compatible with a given macrostate.
I don’t need formulas for what I want to explain.
In thermodynamics the macrostates are described by magnitudes like temperature or pressure. To extend it to systems I need to extend the definition of entropy. So a given macrostate would consist on a certain whole system working mode.
A microchip would be an example of a very low entropy sub-system. Milions of transistors etched and printed on an almost monocrystal silicon block. With micro or even nano-metric precision. Any small detail out of place and the system no longer works as it is meant to. I would call it an extremely low entropy island: the microchip.
Thermodynamics applies. To get all this entropy out of the chip we require the system to pump it out using a lot of energy. Or better. We know “using energy” is a somehow fallacious statement. “Using energy” means getting low entropy energy and degrade it to a higher entropy version. Diffused heat being the highest entropy energy version of them all. (as you use, as a simplification, in your transcripted talk "Peak Oil, Entropy, and Stoic Philosophy").
So, to get these low-entropy islands to work we need an entropy pump that can’t help generating more entropy that is sent elsewhere. Call it “waste” or “pollution”, to use the terms in the models you are showing.
In the microchip example, TSMC (and its subcontractors) would be a gigantic entropy pump.
Many technological “advances” end-up providing wonderful low-entropy machines, so they can be analysed under this same lens.
Could we use this concept with bureaucracy and extractive elites proliferation? To some extent I think we can. It requires just analysing the system hierarchy-distributed duality. Let’s say we have a system that works in a distributed fashion. Lots of small arrangements between individual parts, without much communication between big blocks. The whole works well enough, despite the many local errors and inefficiencies because of lack of coordination. At some point someone detects these problems and comes up with tow main ideas:
- What if we try to establish some coordination procedures to improve efficiency?
- What if we try to train people and share information so that all the individuals are well equipped to perform?
It’s the beginning of elite creation. The underlying ideas are so appealing that it seems almost impossible to argue against them. And yet…
I don’t want to go into the discussion about how much education, regulation, governance is useful, how much is patological, and how the system misregulates it.
This newly created elite layers may make the system work smoother and more efficiently, but small mistakes or corruption at these layers may also cause major disasters. Just as what happens in a microchip. So we could consider these elites as “low-entropy islands” of the system. They require very low entropy to function well. This low entropy requires pumping more entropy elsewhere.
In a microchip, once the gigantic entropy pump is put into place and working, at least, the low-entropy islands we generate are stable. Yes, a chip is sensitive to radiation messing-up with the atoms and transistors and it might put it out of order. But in general, microchips work quite well for a good time without failure. We cannot say the same about these chip-like institutions and bureaucracies, with all their departments, forms and protocols. Once they are up and running, they seem to be permanently leaking entropy in (errors, corruption, alienation...), that requires constant pumping entropy out, exhausting the whole system. The problems increase as elites areas of power extends.
Commoners vs. Elites, producing vs. non-producing, the working class vs. the idle rich, labor vs. management/capital.
It all boils down to one simple concept: Unchecked unbridled greed will destroy civilization, if not drive us into extinction altogether. Right now, the latter appears to be the increasingly likely scenario.
The assertion in the essay that power is always concentrated within a fixed elite structure, where one group merely replaces another, is not always correct. There are exceptions this, such as in the USA under the Jacksonians. Unlike traditional elite transitions, where power shifts between factions within a narrow ruling class, the Jacksonians actively worked to dismantle concentrated power structures and expand the base of political and economic decision making. Their destruction of the Second Bank of the United States, their push for local financial control, and their resistance to monopolistic structures undermined a centralized ruling elite and redistributed decision-making across a much broader and more diverse class of participants, including small business owners, local bankers, farmers, and professionals. This fundamentally changed the nature of governance, making it more participatory and less dominated by a singular elite faction.
If elites were always simply replaced rather than structurally diminished, then the Jacksonian era would have resulted in just another small ruling class stepping into power. But that’s not what happened. Instead, the Jacksonians shattered the concentrated power nexus of Northeastern finance, the Southern planter aristocracy, and London capital, which had previously exercised disproportionate control over the American economy. If there was an elite under the Jacksonian system, it was significantly larger, more regionally distributed, and less capable of acting in unison to exert control. This diffusion of power and decision-making shows that elite structures are not always a constant, they can be expanded, fragmented, and weakened through deliberate political and economic actions. The essay's premise ignores these dynamics and assumes that centralized elite dominance is inevitable, when history proves otherwise.
Right: there are always exceptions. But also rules!