A breathless fret-fest.

The author's pretensions to tell everyone else in the world what they should be doing, and hence what their values should be, is particularly unispiring given his own premise that no-one is capable of understanding the problem or the solution.

But by all means stop consuming the fruits of the dreaded capitalism, Peter. Think of all the carbon atoms you'll be saving from misallocation.

All
Have you noticed how the OLO articles by academics are invariably the most theoretically incoherent?

Hiding information by allowing published readings to feel complex while intelligent argument is not apparent.

Years ago I heard a media discussion on how if corporate reports weren't filled with "Utopia" example babble, report drafters were asked to submit another report using increased amounts of babble language. I believe the idea was for listeners to conclude corporate employees were having their time consumed with busyness rather than formulating good business.

I promote ideas that everything (as in most information stated to have happened behind closed doors) is fake, science is the new magic. Space probes sending radio wave images from Pluto have got to be lies, allowing thinking people an opportunity to realise media news stories are often lies.

Complex societies hide from poor thinking people how money can be invented out of nothing, paying for many workers labours.

Children first attend schools aged 5 and 6 years. If children aren't prepared to listen to teachers for the number of hours allocated by teachers. Children I believe will become mentally stressed. Add playground bullying fears bad behaviours. At the end of each school day, children are mentally exhausted, unwilling to think, learn how to avoid thought in order to feel least mental stress.

I often accuse working class education as little more than punishing childhood curiosity. ADHD and ADD primarily caused by schooling education.

Anything published by technical educators that is not efficiently pointing out a thinkable understanding, punishes future readers desires to read more and or read anything financially useful information.

Society needs truck drives more than what education systems state as needing more technical engineers.

Google "deskilling" to read ideas that computers are removing needs for skilled workers. I state computer societies aid reasons to advance learning skills, are wrong. The myth is used to advance people into wanting to learn only to have forced mental stress learning to kill childhood curiosity.

I accuse education as being the cause of increased mental depression; suicide; ADHD; ADD; bipolar. Governments do bad things to populations. Governments don't want populations to realise bad things are being done to populations.

Journalists embarrassing politicians evidence of democracy is easily faked. There are not that many published political journalists and fewer editors allowing stories to be published.

Internet journalism are further opportunities for paid journalists and want to be paid journalists to display stories, believers in democracy bother to read.

Seems like a thoroughgoing assess of the state of the humanly created world-mummery to me.
And speaking of complexity and the limits of what is usually promoted as common sense, the first page of this essay featured an advertisement for the Next World featuring the far-out work of the theoretical physicist Michiu Kaku.

Ordinary common sense does of course have very practical uses and benefits for the necessary business of getting things done. But when it becomes the limit of human possibility then human beings are reduced to unconscious robotic machines in a bee-hive and-nest world, the only purpose of which is the survival of the species, and nothing more. Indeed humankind as it presently functions displays the same essential characteristics as a hive or nest. Everybody gets up in the morning and does more of less the same thing - who wrote the unconscious script that is patterning everyone and every thing.

This piece proves nothing else but that there are far too many people, paid far too much to do far too little.

If this were not the case, they would be far too busy doing something useful & productive, rather than writing these useless digitations, on nothing.

Peter, you may perhaps have read Joeseph Traintner's book The Collapse of Complex Societies ?

His explanation for most societies is diminishing returns due to
complexity and the increasing difficulty of decining resources.
eg Rome and the decline of th silver mines in Spain and the cost of slaves.

If you have not read it, it is very worthwhile.