The Necroeconomy Endgame

The world’s dominant economic systems—whether the state-managed capitalism of China or the oligarch-driven markets of the West—are hurtling toward a reckoning. Both are extractive machines, relentlessly consuming Earth’s finite resources to fuel growth that cannot last. Fossil fuels, fertile land, freshwater, and metal ores are not infinite; neither are the ecosystems that sustain us. Yet, these systems operate as if they are, generating waste, pollution, and staggering wealth disparities while ignoring the looming limits of a finite planet. As resources dwindle, ecosystems collapse, and climate chaos intensifies, stagnation and decline are not mere possibilities—they are certainties. This is not progress; it is a moonshot toward collapse, a 250-year sprint that began with the steam engine and ends with a civilization unraveling under the weight of its own excesses.

The evidence is stark. Global energy resources—coal, oil, gas—are nearing peak extraction, not because renewables will seamlessly replace them, but because affordable supplies are running dry. Without cheap energy, the industrial and agricultural output that underpins our way of life will decline. Freshwater reserves are shrinking, economically viable minerals are harder to extract, and climate change is battering agriculture and infrastructure with fiercer storms, rising seas, and wildfires. These are not abstract threats; they are the material limits of a planet pushed beyond its capacity. Both the United States and China, despite their differences, share a fatal flaw: neither has a plan for when their extractive models falter. Denial is their strategy, propped up by a refusal to acknowledge that building a civilization on a one-time inheritance of resources is, by definition, unsustainable.

This crisis is compounded by a deeper malaise: the psychological decay of those steering the ship. Extreme wealth, as social psychologists note, erodes empathy, inflates narcissism, and distorts reality. Tech moguls dream of colonizing Mars while Earth burns; billionaires indulge bizarre whims, from space-faring fantasies to demanding servants discard plates after a single use. This “Plutocratic Psychosis” is not mere eccentricity—it’s a symptom of minds unmoored by limitless power, detached from the constraints that tether most of us to a shared reality. Worse, these individuals wield unparalleled influence, reshaping economies, technologies, and politics to suit their warped visions. Our cultural mythology, which equates wealth with wisdom, only amplifies this danger, casting the psychologically compromised as visionaries rather than casualties of a system that rewards greed.

The consequences are dystopian. The monied elite, insulated by their wealth, are positioning themselves to thrive in fortified enclaves, orbiting habitats, or as cyborgian “Human 2.0s” resilient to the chaos they’ve helped create. Meanwhile, the masses will be left to scramble for scraps, fighting over dwindling resources as climate change renders swaths of the planet uninhabitable. This is not science fiction; it’s the logical endpoint of a system that prioritizes profit over survival. The “necroeconomy,” as some call it, thrives on the monetization of death—be it ecosystems, species, or human potential—while suppressing dissent through a “Great Silence.” News outlets, gamified and profit-driven, avoid covering the climate, ecological, and humanitarian crises, as truth is neither profitable nor palatable to power. This self-censorship, fueled by algorithmic gatekeepers and a dopamine-addicted public, ensures collapse arrives on a quiet note, even as reality grows increasingly dystopian.

At the root of this mess lies a flawed human narrative: supremacy. For millennia, we’ve justified exploitation—of nature, of “lesser” species, of each other—through stories of dominance. These tales, once confined to tribal or racial hierarchies, now permeate corporate boardrooms and economic systems. Corporations, governed not by ethics but by profit, birthed what some call “The Thing”—a semi-sentient, AI-powered incarnation of greed that prioritizes shareholder value over life itself. Governments, reduced to “Reality Management Authorities,” serve as puppets of this necrocapitalist machine, lying about the climate crisis to cling to power. The result is an algorithmocracy where profit, not people, reigns supreme, accelerating humanity’s worst impulses and silencing those who dare speak truth.

The “triple disappearing act”—of food, life and sanity—encapsulates our predicament. As resources vanish, biodiversity collapses, and mental clarity erodes under the weight of a transactional existence, humanity teeters on the brink. Many people, especially those in the MAGA-Evangelical cults, won’t rise up until they’ve lost everything and, by then, they may turn on each other, fighting over scraps or empowering fascists to stem the tide of climate refugees. History warns us what follows: global conflict, perhaps even nuclear war—as Pakistan and India now threaten, in part because, since May 4, India lowered sluice gates at the Baglihar dam, effectively reducing the downstream flow to Pakistan through the Chenab River by up to 90%. Prior civilizations fell when they outstripped their resources; ours, with its global reach and technological might, faces a collapse of unprecedented scale.

There is no easy fix. Technology, while extending the timeline, cannot defy physics. The monied elite will hoard advancements, then escape to bunkers and, finally, space stations, when the planet is pushed past its limits. The question is not whether collapse will come, but whether we can salvage something from the wreckage. To do so, we must reject the myths of supremacy and wealth-as-wisdom, confront the necroeconomy head-on, and rebuild systems that prioritize life over profit. Otherwise, we risk not just the end of civilization, but the extinction of life on Earth—a demise orchestrated by the very forces we’ve allowed to define us.

In a 2020 Pew Research repport, experts said the ‘New Normal’ in 2025 would be tech-driven, and were apprehensive about deepening inequalities, heightened surveillance, and the unchecked power of technology companies. The overarching theme was that technological advancements, while offering opportunities, would exacerbate existing disparities, leaving the disadvantaged further behind.

Respondents noted that disinformation on digital platforms would threaten social, political, and economic stability; that remedies, such as regulating misinformation, would risk infringing on civil liberties, creating a complex balance between security and freedom. The "panopticon" of surveillance would allow technology companies to act as unregulated proto-governments, aligning with authoritarian regimes. Other predictions included prolonged unemployment, increased debt, and reduced social connections, particularly for women forced out of the workforce due to childcare demands; health disparities, with unequal access to care; and the tech sector’s role in creating a new Gilded Age, where wealth concentration undermined civil society.

Mental health and social isolation were significant concerns, with increased online interaction reducing in-person connections. The consensus was that, without significant intervention, the trajectory pointed to greater division, reduced privacy, and a world where technology amplifies existing injustices rather than resolving them.

According to a May 7 CNN report, 69% of US adults say higher food prices are making it difficult to eat a healthy diet. Those with fixed or lower incomes were hardest hit, with 47% reporting difficulty in eating healthy meals compared with only 15% of upper-income adults, according to the survey of 5,123 adults conducted during the week of February 24 to March 2.

French peasants stormed the Bastille on July 14, 1789 mainly because they were starving, as a result of the monarchy's policies. From the French Revolution to the Arab Spring, high food prices have been cited as a factor behind mass protest movements. Yaneer Bar-Yam of the New England Complex Systems Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts says that, using mathematical modeling, food prices can help predict when social unrest is likely to break out.

Meanwhile, White House advisor and reanimated Joseph Goebbels, Stephen Miller, said on May 9 that the Trump administration was considering suspending the writ of habeas corpus, the legal right to challenge one’s detention, which would allow for mass arrests and incarceration (somewhere in the world) of US citizens. Habeas corpus derives from English common law, is thought to have originated in the Assize of Clarendon of 1166, and was guaranteed by Magna Carta in 1215. It was first introduced to the United States at the 1787 Constitutional Convention. The suspension clause of the US constitution says: “The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.” It has been suspended four times in US history—by Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War of 1860-65, during efforts to fight the Ku Klux Klan in the 19th century in South Carolina, in the Philippines in 1905, and in Hawaii after Pearl Harbor in December, 1941.

John Cleese quips, “I see Stephen Miller says he is actively thinking about suspending ‘habeas corpus’. As this has been the keystone of the Rule of Law for centuries, I’d like to suggest that we actively think about suspending Stephen Miller… Preferably by the neck.”