Comment by sharpener

I agree with the comments that the article is misdirecting fluff. Cutting through...

All organised systems (anything that we would describe as a system as opposed to random or chaos) require additional energy inputs to maintain organisation over and above those energy inputs required for performing input-output function. Maintenance requires work.

All life on Earth depends on the thermodynamic gradient supplied by the Sun being appropriately steep enough for that additional organisational margin to be provided within tolerances, but not too steep to make everything excessively random, or too shallow to stop stuff moving.

Failing to provide that extra margin of energy for organisation for any part of the functionality of a system results in breakdown and halting.

E.g. Quite a lot of the extra margin of human organisation energy is provided via being omnivores _at the top_ of the food chain. If all the plankton and birds and bees die -> Humans don't get enough food -> Disorganisation -> Dead humans.

It is possible to build forms of organisation that are inherently unstable outside of limited tolerances. Stepping outside of those tolerances exponentially raises the extra costs required to maintain organisation. Needless to say Nature doesn't keep many such systems around, if any, particularly when under significant stress. They get weeded out fast.

The extra kicker in human economic organisation is money as a mediator for controlling energy allocation. Organisations retain function if they can afford to support the additional cost of being organised. Within monetary systems, profits have to remain high enough to pay off loan interest and support organisation. But... If people without enough jobs or money starve -> The latent labour pool dies -> No support for growth, no maintenance -> breakdown. So the labour force loses a margin of value-add generated in order to support organisation. The hidden labour force that is Nature loses out once human economies/populations grow too fast or too large. So modern humans do this "supporting organisation" without considering Nature as part of the organisation, and frequently fail to support the labour pool properly.

Obsolete monetary/value system designs are a big problem.

Globally, monetary systems to support sustainable societies should provide for: equilibration against destructive monopolies - especially at the ForEx level; enough liquidity - supplied through limited liability loan failures under capitalism - to meet aggregate interest on loans and organisational costs AND latent labour pool support; maintenance of key functional inputs, like food, sunlight,...; and zero cumulative pollution;

Why shouldn't every viable economic or social unit operate monetarily locally according to Kirchhoff's current law, if money is an adequate proxy for energy? Why do we not price in the extra energy input Nature requires to remain coherent and still balance supply and demand?

Humans previously kept building inherently unstable civilisation structures with inherently unstable monetary systems that cannot cope with externally imposed constraints arising. They kept failing to preserve and maintain the inputs sensibly, and they designed monetary systems that are typically destined to create and exarcerbate those failures.

They could collectively: stop breeding like rabbits; design better monetary systems; stop shitting on the environment.

All of it is technologically feasible already. How much of that is politically feasible right now? People are holding people back by being people. Wicked problem. Difficult to handle kindly.