In other words, everything down here on the ground could be just fine if we weren’t burdened with satisfying the needs of the abstracted map we created to represent our world for the benefit of the obscenely wealthy.

Behavioral economics is just another form of binding nature—in this case, human nature—to one’s service by treating people like programmable machines.

Digital technology is valued most for its ability to scale a business without needing to hire many human beings, and to provide the earnings or—as is more often the case—the hype required to boost the share price.

The principles for building a more circular economy that isn’t dependent on growth are straightforward. Keep resources and revenue recirculating through the community, and accessible to the working class. Leverage the power of mutual aid to lift up one member of the community at a time, each according to their need. Maintain independence from big

It’s not the technology they use but the will to conquer—the striving itself—that creates the core problem.

They were working out what I’ve come to call the Insulation Equation: could they earn enough money to insulate themselves from the reality they were creating by earning money in this way?

The Mindset encourages a form of “winning” that requires its human and corporate victors to rise above those who have been necessarily left behind. Winning, after all, is by definition a way of setting oneself apart from everyone else. This separateness is the very object of the game, so we shouldn’t be surprised that those who reach the top of the

Behavioral economics is really just a euphemism for marketing psychology, from an even more programmatic perspective.

Too many of today’s technological processes stem from this same urge to distance consumers from the reality of labor.