Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
What happens when the global economy depends on fish traveling 10,000 miles, oil flowing through a single strait, and enough cheap fossil fuel energy to build civilizations that previous generations couldn’t even imagine?
War has become a fever that world leaders cannot seem to break. As militarism spreads, its costs extend far beyond the battlefield, accelerating climate change while consuming the resources needed to confront it.
Modern economies depend on unpriced ecosystem functions and undervalued care and reproductive labor—essential inputs that are difficult to commodify. This tension helps explain environmental degradation, social strain, and the limits of market systems.
It’s curious that money trauma hasn’t gone into the mainstream yet. It’s one of the most fundamental forces shaping how we move around in our lives, and yet it remains incredibly taboo.
So, there you have it. Trump and his team have stumbled into a war they cannot win. If the war does not end soon, it will likely destroy the world economy for lack of energy supplies and plunge it into a deep, years-long depression, one from which it will be difficult to emerge.
Financial markets so far have reflected the belief that the Iran war will be over soon and that commerce will return to normal. I explain why I think this belief is unwarranted and why President Trump’s latest announcement regarding bombing Iran’s power plants is economic suicide.
The challenge before us is therefore larger than “teaching men how to succeed”. It is to teach them how to succeed without destroying the world that makes success meaningful and, when necessary, how to transform the systems that place those goals in conflict.
Oil price manipulation is taking many forms after the closure of one of the world’s major choke points for oil transport sent oil prices higher.
After the financial crash of 2008-9, I started to discover tools and ideas that I thought were promising, but discrete and disconnected. But they’re not: they can be (and are being) used together to form networks that have the potential to grow exponentially to challenge the status quo – to build a commons economy, a commons society, a commons world.
In this installment, Nate addresses the U.S. and Israeli military offensive against Iran and traces the reverberating effects that extend far beyond the conflict itself, starting with what the closure of the Strait of Hormuz means for a civilization that routes a massive share of its physical economy through a single maritime corridor.
But to the extent that economic growth and carbon-fuel usage are tightly linked – and not capable of being “decoupled” – some degrowth agenda is ultimately inescapable. The only question may be whether it will arrive via catastrophe or choice.
Mitchell’s new book reinforces this essential point. We must see through the alibi of capital, we must reclaim society from the grip of the economy, and we must change the rules of the game to save our collective future.
