The tendency of profits to decline is is what drives the supposed innovation of the capitalist system: the need to always move to a different horizon of extraction, to find untapped sources of value that can stave off this heat-death for just a little longer. Sometimes the state intervenes and slaps them away from one horizon of extraction (see: child labor laws,) but this only rarely happens.

The Nature of the Unnatural

Consider: we think of paper when made by human beings as an artificial substance – a relatively benign one, but artificial nonetheless – but when made by wasps for a nest, the paper is natural. Every building is artificial, but a beaver dam is clearly natural. A tool made by an octopus or a crow feels more “natural” than something made by a human.

Analysis, Written by: CameronCameron SummersDecember 16, 2020Ecology, Anti-Civilization, Bellamy Fitzpatrick, Bruce Sterling, tomorrow now, Cara Dagget, Petro-Masculinity, Masculinity, Essentialism, Mad Max: Fury Road, Adam Curtis, All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace, EpistemologyComment