America has the knowledge, technology, and resources to address the unfolding crises that our country faces – unchecked and unsustainable patterns of growth, extreme wealth concentration, and the overarching threat of climate change. These specters need not drive our society to disintegration. And yet we, as a nation, have been unable to step up to these challenges - not due to a lack of technical ability, but because the dysfunction in our society and government has already reached the point that most of us cannot even recognize the imminent danger posed by the threats in our midst, and the accelerating disunity in America has made us incapable of springing into action to face those threats. And make no mistake - these looming threats will result in an ecological cataclysm if we do not radically change the way we are structured and how we operate.

This manifesto, written by a systems engineer with over twenty-five years of experience, aims to contribute to the public dialogue an understanding of how the tools of systems engineering can be applied to fix our broken civil and societal systems so that we can begin the necessary, radical, and rapid response to climate change. There is a tendency, when thinking through the current state of national and world affairs and projecting today’s problems and crises into the future, to despair. This manifesto is intended to counter that despair with a structured approach, demonstrating that, using only the tools we already have at hand, we can still establish a well-functioning and sustainable society.

Inspirations & Key References

BOOKS

Larry Lessig Ted Talk: Our democracy no longer represents the people. Here’s how we fix it. (October 20, 2015)

Larry Lessig Ted Talk: How the Net destroyed democracy (August 10, 2017)

Dan Carlin: Common Sense 319 – A Recipe for Caesar (March, 31, 2020) https://www.dancarlin.com/product/common-sense-319-a-recipe-for-caesar/

ARTICLES

Chris Hedges: Sheldon Wolin and Inverted Totalitarianism (truthdig.com, November 2, 2015) https://www.truthdig.com/articles/sheldon-wolin-and-inverted-totalitarianism/

Kurt Andersen: How America Lost Its Mind (The Atlantic, September, 2017) https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/09/how-america-lost-its-mind/534231/

Jonathan Haidt: Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid (The Atlantic, April 11, 2022) https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/05/social-media-democracy-trust-babel/629369/

C Thi Nguyen: Escape the echo chamber (aeon, April 9, 2018) https://aeon.co/essays/why-its-as-hard-to-escape-an-echo-chamber-as-it-is-to-flee-a-cult

Paul Rosenberg: A terrifying new theory: Fake news and conspiracy theories as an evolutionary strategy (salon.com, August 8, 2021) https://www.salon.com/2021/08/08/a-terrifying-new-theory-fake-news-and-conspiracy-theories-as-an-evolutionary-strategy/

James Poniewozik: The Real Donald Trump Is a Character on TV (New York Times, September 6, 2019) https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/06/opinion/sunday/trump-reality-tv.html

John Molinaro & Solveig Spjeldnes: The Electoral College and the Rural-Urban Divide (Aspen Institute, February 1, 2021) https://www.aspeninstitute.org/blog-posts/the-electoral-college-and-the-rural-urban-divide/

Samuel Earle: The Timeline We’re On Is Even Darker Than ‘The Matrix’ Envisioned (New York Times, December 22, 2021) https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/22/opinion/the-matrix-resurrections-internet-dystopia.html

Peter Shanosky: America Has Become A Three-Caste, Medieval Economy (medium.com, February 17, 2022) https://marker.medium.com/america-has-become-a-three-caste-medieval-economy-f82a380d06bb

Christopher Ketcham: The Fallacy of Endless Economic Growth (Pacific Standard, September 22, 2018) https://psmag.com/magazine/fallacy-of-endless-growth

David Wallace-Wells: The Uninhabitable Earth – Famine, economic collapse, a sun that cooks us: What climate change could wreak – sooner than you think (New York Magazine, July 10, 2017 – updated) https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2017/07/climate-change-earth-too-hot-for-humans.html

Alex Steffen: Predatory Delay and the Rights of Future Generations (medium.com, April 29, 2016) https://medium.com/@AlexSteffen/predatory-delay-and-the-rights-of-future-generations-69b06094a16

Alex Steffen: The Apocalypse Makes Us Dumb (alexsteffen.com, May 11, 2015) https://www.alexsteffen.com/apocalypse_makes_us_dumb

Judith D. Schwartz: Soil as Carbon Storehouse: New Weapon in Climate Fight? (Yale Environment 360, March 4, 2014) https://e360.yale.edu/features/soil_as_carbon_storehouse_new_weapon_in_climate_fight

Moises Velasquez-Manoff: Can Dirt Save the Earth (New York Times – Magazine, April 18, 2018) https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/18/magazine/dirt-save-earth-carbon-farming-climate-change.html

Damien Cave: Can a Carbon-Emitting Iron Ore Tycoon Save the Planet? (New York Times, October 16, 2021) https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/16/business/energy-environment/green-energy-fortescue-andrew-forrest.html

END NOTES

[1] Report from the Costs of War project: Costs of the 20-year war on terror: $8 trillion and 900,000 deaths (Brown University, September 1, 2021) A report released by the Costs of War project https://www.brown.edu/news/2021-09-01/costsofwar

[2] Erik W. Goepner: Measuring the Effectiveness of America's War on Terror (Army War College Press, Parameters 46, no. 1, 2016) https://publications.armywarcollege.edu/pubs/3323.pdf

[3] Dan Shreve and Wade Schauer: Deep decarbonization requires deep pockets (Wood Mackenzie, June 2019) https://e360.yale.edu/digest/shifting-u-s-to-100-percent-renewables-would-cost-4-5-trillion-analysis-finds http://www.decarbonisation.think.woodmac.com/

[4] Hunger in America (Feeding America) https://www.feedingamerica.org/hunger-in-america

[5] Kimberly Amadeo: Living Wage and How It Compares to the Minimum Wage (the balance, August 30, 2020) https://www.thebalance.com/living-wage-3305771

[6] Felix Smith: Exclusive: America's true unemployment rate (AXIOS, October 13, 2020) https://www.axios.com/americas-true-unemployment-rate-6e34decb-c274-4feb-a4af-ffac8cf5840d.html

CHAPTER ONE – Approach & Process

[7] Harvard Law Review: Pack the Union: A Proposal to Admit New States for the Purpose of Amending the Constitution to Ensure Equal Representation (Harvard Law Review, January 10, 2020) Vol. 133: 1049-70 https://harvardlawreview.org/2020/01/pack-the-union-a-proposal-to-admit-new-states-for-the-purpose-of-amending-the-constitution-to-ensure-equal-representation/

[8] Kurt A. Raaflaub, Josiah Ober, Robert Wallace: Origins of Democracy in Ancient Greece (Berkeley: The Joan Palevsky Imprint in Classical Literature - University of California Press, 2007) pp. 54, 58

[9] K. J. Hölkeskamp: Written Law in Archaic Greece (Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society, 1992)

[10] Norman Reynolds: The Athenian constitution from Solon to Pericles B.C. 594 – B.C. 457 (University of Louisville, Paper 1864, 1942)

[11] Ezra Klein: The definitive case for ending the filibuster (New York Times, October 1, 2020 https://www.vox.com/21424582/filibuster-joe-biden-2020-senate-democrats-abolish-trump

[12] Robert Brulle: 30 years ago global warming became front-page news – and both Republicans and Democrats took itseriously (The Conversation, 2018) https://theconversation.com/30-years-ago-global-warming-became-front-page-news-and-both-republicans-and-democrats-took-it-seriously-97658

[13] Anu Partanen and Trevor Corson: Finland is a Capitalist Paradise (New York Times, December 7, 2019) https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/07/opinion/sunday/finland-socialism-capitalism.html

[14] Sujata Gupta: Military towns are the most racially integrated places in the U.S. Here's why (ScienceNews.org, February 8, 2022) https://www.sciencenews.org/article/military-towns-integration-segregation-united-states#:~:text=On%20July%2026%2C%201948%2C%20President,that%20the%20armed%20forces%20integrate.

[15] Nicholas D. Kristof: Our Lefty Military (New York Times, June 15, 2011) https://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/16/opinion/16kristof.html

[16] Roland Paulsen: The Art Of Not Working At Work (The Atlantic, November 3, 2014) https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/11/the-art-of-not-working-at-work/382121/

[17] Howard Nicholas: Economics in Simple Terms (from a lecture delivered at the Institute of Societal Studies, The Hague (ISS), April 14, 2013) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpZSla0egW0

[18] Walter A. McDougall: Freedom Just Around the Corner (New York: Harper Collins, 2004) p. 58

[19] C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group, C40 Knowledge Hub, City of Heidelberg: How Heidelberg built one of the world's largest carbon-neutral districts (C40 Knowledge Hub, January, 2021) https://www.c40knowledgehub.org/s/article/How-Heidelberg-built-one-of-the-worlds-largest-carbon-neutral-districts?language=en_US

CHAPTER TWO – What Is Broken?

[20] Eric Posner: Milton Friedman Was Wrong (The Atlantic, August 22, 2019) https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/08/milton-friedman-shareholder-wrong/596545/

[21] Charles M. Blow: Empire at the End of Decadence (New York Times, February 18, 2011) https://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/19/opinion/19blow.html

[22] Kerstine Appunn, Freja Eriiksen, Julian Wettengel: Germany's greenhouse gas emissions and energy transition targets (Clean Energy Wire, July 26, 2021) https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-greenhouse-gas-emissions-and-climate-targets

[23] Paul Hockenos: Norway's stunning climate hypocrisy (energytransition.org, October 8, 2018) https://energytransition.org/2018/10/norways-climate-hypocrisy/

[24] https://www.worldmeters.info

[25] James Poniewozik: Audience of One – Donald Trump, Television, and the Fracturing of America (New York: Liveright Publishing Corporation, 2019)

[26] Neil Postman:Amusing Ourselves to Death – Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (New York: Viking, 1985)

[27] Jacqueline Howard: Americans devote more than 10 hours a day to screen time, and growing (CNN health, July 29, 2016) https://www.cnn.com/2016/06/30/health/americans-screen-time-nielsen/index.html#:~:text=The%20average%20American%20spends%20nearly,first%20quarter%20of%20this%20year.

[28] https://shoshanazuboff.com/book/

[29] C. Thi Nguyen: Echo Chambers and Epistemic Bubbles (Cambridge University Press – online, September 13, 2018) https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/episteme/article/abs/echo-chambers-and-epistemic-bubbles/5D4AC3A808C538E17C50A7C09EC706F0

Escape the echo chamber (aeon, April 9, 2018) https://aeon.co/essays/why-its-as-hard-to-escape-an-echo-chamber-as-it-is-to-flee-a-cult

[30] Jonathan Haidt:Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid (The Atlantic, April 11, 2022) https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/05/social-media-democracy-trust-babel/629369/

[31] Gregory Bateson: Naven: A survey of the Problems Suggested by a Composite Picture of the Culture of a New Guinea Tribe Drawn from Three Points of View (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1936)

[32] David Graeber and David Wengrow: The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021)

[33] Nicole H. Hess and Edward H. Hagen: Psychological Adaptations for Assessing Gossip Veracity (Human Nature, Fall, 2006, Vol. 17, No.3) pp 337-354

[34] Paul Rosenberg – interview with Michael Bang Petersen: A terrifying new theory: Fake news and conspiracy theories as an evolutionary strategy (salon.com, August 8, 2021) https://www.salon.com/2021/08/08/a-terrifying-new-theory-fake-news-and-conspiracy-theories-as-an-evolutionary-strategy/

[35] Stephen Whitefield: Why the 'Protocols of the Elders of Zion' is still pushed by anti-Semites more than a century after hoax first circulated (theconversation.com, September 2, 2020) https://theconversation.com/why-the-protocols-of-the-elders-of-zion-is-still-pushed-by-anti-semites-more-than-a-century-after-hoax-first-circulated-145220

[36] Isaac Chotiner: Too Close for Comfort – How much do the early days of the Trump administration look like the Third Reich? Historian Richard Evans weighs in (slate.com, February 10, 2017) https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2017/02/historian-richard-evans-says-trumps-america-isnt-exactly-like-the-third-reich-but-its-too-close-for-comfort.html

[37] Kurt Andersen: Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire: A 500-Year History (New York: Random House, 2018)

[38] Dan Carlin: Common Sense 319 – A Recipe for Caesar (dancarlin.com, March 31, 2020)

[39] Chuck Collins: Updates: Billionaire Wealth, U.S., Job Losses and Pandemic Profiteers (inequality.org, October 18, 2021) https://inequality.org/great-divide/updates-billionaire-pandemic/

[40] Alexandre Tanzi and Mike Dorning: Top 1% of U.S. Earners Now Hold More Wealth Than All of the Middle Class (Bloomberg, October 8, 2021) https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-10-08/top-1-earners-hold-more-wealth-than-the-u-s-middle-class?cmpid=BBD100821_BIZ&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&utm_term=211008&utm_campaign=bloombergdaily

[41] Ana Hernández and Lowell R. Ricketts: Has Wealth Inequality in America Changed over Time? Here Are Key Statistics (Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, December 2, 2020) https://www.stlouisfed.org/open-vault/2020/december/has-wealth-inequality-changed-over-time-key-statistics

[42] Nick Hanauer, a Seattle entrepreneur worth hundreds of millions of dollars, has started the think tank Civic Ventures working to solve the wealth divide and other problems with U.S. society https://civic-ventures.com/

[43] John Kay: Other People's Money: The Real Business of Finance (New York: PublicAffairs, 2015) https://www.ft.com/content/bf4e7770-613a-11e5-9846-de406ccb37f2

[44] Matt Blackman: Decoding the Derivative Dilemma (TRADERSLOG) https://www.traderslog.com/derivative-dilemma

[45] Richard Duncan: abridgement of Chapter 9 of The Corruption of Capitalism (Washington DC: CLSA Books, 2009) https://richardduncaneconomics.com/deregulation-derivatives-the-threat-of-mass-destruction/

[46] John Molinaro & Solveig Spjeldnes: The Electoral College and the Rural-Urban Divide (Aspen Institute, February 1, 2021) https://www.aspeninstitute.org/blog-posts/the-electoral-college-and-the-rural-urban-divide/

[47] Jonathan Shaw: A Radical Fix for the republic (Harvard Magazine, July-August 2012) https://www.harvardmagazine.com/sites/default/files/pdf/2012/07-pdfs/0712-21.pdf

Also refer to Lessig's TED talk listed under Further Reading – Videos

[48] Shannon Hall: Exxon Knew about Climate Change almost 40 years ago (Scientific American, October 26, 2015) https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/exxon-knew-about-climate-change-almost-40-years-ago/

[49] https://www.joboneforhumanity.org/climate_tipping_points

[50] Charlotte L Outhwaite, Peter McCann, Tim Newbold: Agriculture and climate change are reshaping insect biodiversity worldwide (Nature, Vol 605, May 5, 2022) 97-102 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-04644-x

[51] University of Leicester: Failing phytoplankton, failing oxygen: Global warming disaster could suffocate life on planet Earth (ScienceDaily, December 1, 2015) www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/12/151201094120.htm

Yadigar Sekerci, Sergei Petrovskii: Mathematical Modelling of Plankton-Oxygen Dynamics Under the Climate Change (Bulletin of Mathematical Biology, 2015; DOI: 10.1007/s11538-015-0126-0) https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11538-015-0126-0

[52] Grant Currin: Arctic Permafrost is Going Through a Rapid Meltdown – 70 Years Early (LIVESCIENCE, June 13, 2019) https://www.livescience.com/65709-arctic-permafrost-melts-decades-early.html

[53] Ted Schnurr: Permafrost and the Global Carbon Cycle (Arctic Report Card: Update for 2019, NOAA Arctic Program) https://arctic.noaa.gov/Report-Card/Report-Card-2019/ArtMID/7916/ArticleID/844/Permafrost-and-the-Global-Carbon-Cycle

[54] Luciana V. Gatti et. al.: Amazonia as a carbon source linked to deforestation and climate change (Nature 595, 2021) 388-393 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03629-6

[55] Carolyn Gramling: Antarctica's Thwaites Glacier ice shelf could collapse within five years (ScienceNews, December 13, 2021) https://www.sciencenews.org/article/antarctica-thwaites-glacier-ice-shelf-collapse-climate-5-years

[56] Douglas Fox: The West Antarctic Ice Sheet Seems to Be Good at Collapsing (National Geographic, June 13, 2018) https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2018/06/west-antarctic-ice-sheet-collapse-climate-change/

[57] Nina Chestney: Atlantic Ocean Currents weaken, signaling big weather changes – study (Reuters, August 5, 2021) https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/atlantic-ocean-currents-weaken-signalling-big-weather-changes-study-2021-08-05/

[58] Richard Pearson: Are We in the Midst Of a Sixth Mass Extinction? (New York Times, June 3, 2012) https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/06/01/opinion/sunday/are-we-in-the-midst-of-a-sixth-mass-extinction.html?action=click&contentCollection=Opinion&module=RelatedCoverage&pgtype=article&region=Marginalia

[59] David Kramer: US government acts to reduce dependence on China for rare-earth magnets (Physics Today, Volume 74, Issue 2, February 1, 2021) p. 20 https://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/PT.3.4675

[60] Leena Grandell and Mikael Höök: Assessing Rare Metal Availability Challenges for Solar Energy Technologies (Sustainability, ISSN 2071-1050, September 2015) pp. 11818-11837 https://cris.vtt.fi/en/publications/assessing-rare-metal-availability-challenges-for-solar-energy-tec

[61] Wired Staff: Robert Gates: Overhaul the Pentagon (Wired, September 212, 2009) https://www.wired.com/2009/09/ff-smartlist-gates/

[62] The absurd truth about fossil fuel subsidies (Flip the Script, October 13, 2021) https://generation180.org/the-absurd-truth-about-fossil-fuel-subsidies/

[63] Eli Dourado: We Need to Build Our Way Out of This Mess (New York Times, August 16, 2021) https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/11/opinion/politics/we-need-to-build-our-way-out-of-this-mess.html

[64] Tim Purcell: Primer: The Eurodollar Market (Lykeion, February 17, 2021) https://www.thelykeion.com/primer-the-eurodollar-market/

(also refer to Richard A. Werner's article in Key References & Inspirations, treating how banks create money via the issuing of credit)

[65] John Ralston Saul: Voltaire's Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993)

[66] Richard Mitchell: Writing Against Your Life - a speech given November, 1986 at Loyola Marymount University https://sourcetext.com/writing-against-your-life/

[67] Brian Kahn: CO2 Takes Just 10 Years to Reach Planet's Peak Heat (Climate Central, December 3, 2014) https://www.climatecentral.org/news/co2-emissions-peak-heat-18394

[68] Raul Gallegos: What America Doesn't Get About Dictatorships (New York Times, June 20, 2019) https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/20/opinion/venezuelas-dictatorship-maduro.html Gallegos' website: https://raul-gallegos.com/

[69] Katrin Bennhold: After Deadly Floods, a German Village Rethinks Its Relationship to Nature (New York Times, Aug. 6, 2021) https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/06/world/europe/germany-floods-recovery-climate-change-global-warming.html

[70] Van Badham, Sydney, Australia: No, Australia Is Not Actually an Evil Dictatorship (New York Times, October 14, 2021) https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/14/opinion/australia-far-right-america.html

[71] Christopher Hayes: Twilight of the Elites (New York: Crown, 2012)

[72] Kevin Phillips: Numbers Racket (Harper's Magazine, May, 2008) https://harpers.org/archive/2008/05/numbers-racket/

[73] https://www.climate.gov/maps-data#global-climate-dashboard

[74] James K. Galbraith: The Predator State: How Conservatives Abandoned the Free Market and Why Liberals Should Too (New York: Free Press, 2008)

[75] Alex Steffen: Predatory Delay and the Rights of Future Generations (medium.com, April 29, 2016) https://medium.com/@AlexSteffen/predatory-delay-and-the-rights-of-future-generations-69b06094a16

CHAPTER THREE – How We Got Here

[76] Quoting Ballard from a 2003 interview with Australian newspaper The Age

Luc Sante captured Ballard's penetrating insight in: Tales From the Dark Side (New York Times - Books, September 9, 1990) https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/98/07/12/specials/ballard-profile.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

[77] Michael T. Nietzel, Low Literacy Levels Among U.S. Adults Could Be Costing The Economy $2.2 Trillion A Year (Forbes, September 9, 2020) https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeltnietzel/2020/09/09/low-literacy-levels-among-us-adults-could-be-costing-the-economy-22-trillion-a-year/?sh=31c0076f4c90

[78] Felix Smith: Exclusive: America's true unemployment rate (AXIOS, October 13, 2020) https://www.axios.com/americas-true-unemployment-rate-6e34decb-c274-4feb-a4af-ffac8cf5840d.html

[79] https://borgenproject.org/poverty-in-taiwan/

[80] https://www.rts.com/resources/guides/food-waste-america/

[81] https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-nutrition-assistance/food-security-in-the-us/key-statistics-graphics.aspx

[82] Michael Abramowitz: Taiwan's Exemplary Democracy Deserves America's Attention and Support (freedomhouse.org, July 15, 2019) https://freedomhouse.org/article/taiwans-exemplary-democracy-deserves-americas-attention-and-support

[83] Democracy Index 2020 (The Economist – Intelligence Unit) https://www.eiu.com/n/campaigns/democracy-index-2020/

[84] Lawrence Lessig: America is not a democracy: Until we fix the core problem, all other political promises are meaningless (Daily News, September 28, 2015) https://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/lawrence-lessig-america-not-democracy-article-1.2374820

[85] Ezra Klein: Francis Fukuyama: America is in "one of the most severe political crises I have experienced" (vox.com, October 26, 2016) https://www.vox.com/2016/10/26/13352946/francis-fukuyama-ezra-klein

[86] Monmouth University: Public Supports Both Early Voting And Requiring Photo ID to Vote – One-third remain convinced of 2020 election fraud (Monmouth University Polling Institute, June 21, 2021) https://www.monmouth.edu/polling-institute/reports/monmouthpoll_us_062121/

[87] PRRI Staff: The Persistence of QAnon's in the Post-Trump Era: An Analysis of Who Believes the Conspiracies (Public Religion Research Institute, February 24, 2022) https://www.prri.org/research/the-persistence-of-qanon-in-the-post-trump-era-an-analysis-of-who-believes-the-conspiracies/

[88] Olga Oksman: Conspiracy craze: why 12 million Americans believe alien lizards rule us (The Guardian, April 7, 2016) https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/apr/07/conspiracy-theory-paranoia-aliens-illuminati-beyonce-vaccines-cliven-bundy-jfk

[89] Alec MacGillis: An Ocean Away, I Found Some Common Sense on Mask Wearing (New York Times, October 12, 2021) https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/12/opinion/covid-germany-masks-vaccines.html

[90] Jason Hickel: What does degrowth mean? A few points of clarification (Globalizations, DOI:10.1080/14747731.2020.1812222) https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14747731.2020.1812222

[91] A social philosophy that promotes the well-being of the group without sacrificing the significance of the individual https://www.wordsense.eu/societism/

[92] Michael Grant: The Fall of the Roman Empire (Radnor, PA: Annenberg School Press, 1976) p. xii

[93] Sheldon S. Wolin, Democracy, Inc. – Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2017) p. 13

[94] Trinidadian scholar Oliver Cromwell Cox: Caste, Class, and Race (New York: Doubleday, 1948) https://archive.org/details/casteclassracest00coxo/mode/2up

[95] Jamelle Bouie: What 'Structural Racism' Really Means (New York Times, November 9, 2021) https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/09/opinion/structural-racism.html

[96] Michael McGreevy and Fran Baum: Against the odds, South Australia is a renewable energy powerhouse. How on Earth did they do it? (theconversation.com, February 24, 2021) https://theconversation.com/against-the-odds-south-australia-is-a-renewable-energy-powerhouse-how-on-earth-did-they-do-it-153789

[97] Denmark is a laboratory for green solutions (Denmark official website) https://denmark.dk/innovation-and-design/green-solutions

[98] Rachel Waldholz, Alaska's Energy Desk: Kodiak has almost 100 percent renewable power. It took sci-fi tech to get there (KTOO, September 15, 2017) https://www.ktoo.org/2017/09/15/kodiak-almost-100-percent-renewable-power-took-sci-fi-tech-get/

[99] Morris Berman: Why America Failed: The Roots of Imperial Decline (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2011) pp. 81-82

[100] Jessica Murray: Half of emissions cuts will come from future tech, says John Kerry (The Guardian, May 16, 2021) https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/may/16/half-of-emissions-cuts-will-come-from-future-tech-says-john-kerry

[101] Leo Marx: The Machine in the Garden - Technology and the Pastoral Ideal in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1964) p. 197

[102] Ben Steverman: The Wealth Detective Who Finds the Hidden Money of the Super Rich (Bloomberg Businessweek, May 23, 2019) https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-05-23/the-wealth-detective-who-finds-the-hidden-money-of-the-super-rich

CHAPTER FOUR – The Fixes

[103] Chuck Collins: U.S. Billionaire Wealth Surged by 70 Percent, or $2.1 Trillion, During Pandemic (Institute for Policy Studies, October 18, 2021) https://ips-dc.org/u-s-billionaire-wealth-surged-by-70-percent-or-2-1-trillion-during-pandemic-theyre-now-worth-a-combined-5-trillion/

[104] Ha-Joon Chang: Things They Don't Tell You about Capitalism (New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2011) pp. 254-255

[105] Matt Phillips: Lord Adair Turner on the "largely fictional" world of finance (QUARTZ, January 20, 2016) https://qz.com/586664/lord-adair-turner-on-the-largely-fictional-world-of-finance/

[106] Kavaljit Singh - Director of Madhyam, a New Delhi-based non-profit policy research institute: A clear treatment of the Financial Transaction Tax subject: Madhyam Briefing Paper No. 24 (Madhyam, March 23, 2019) https://www.madhyam.org.in/why-the-us-needs-a-financial-transaction-tax/

[107] Andrew Wilner: New Age of Sail looks to slash massive maritime carbon emissions (news.mongabay.com, March 15, 2021) https://news.mongabay.com/2021/03/new-age-of-sail-looks-to-slash-massive-maritime-carbon-emissions/

[108] David Maher: Yara, Lantmannen to bring green fertilizers to market (argus media, January 13, 2022) https://www.argusmedia.com/en/news/2291371-yara-lantmannen-to-bring-green-fertilizers-to-market

[109] Sylvia Hurlimann: How Kelp Naturally Combats Global Climate Change (SITN, Harvard University, 2019) https://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2019/how-kelp-naturally-combats-global-climate-change/

[110] Dorte Krause-Jensen & Carlos M. Duarte: Substantial role of macroalgae in marine carbon sequestration (nature geoscience 9, 2017) pp. 737-742 https://www.nature.com/articles/ngeo2790

[111] https://www.climatefoundation.org/marine-permaculture.html

[112] Emma Bryce: Can the Forests of the World's Oceans Contribute to Alleviate the Climate Crisis? (ensia.com) https://ensia.com/features/kelp-carbon-sequestration-climate-mitigation/

[113] http://www.fao.org/soils-portal/soil-management/soil-carbon-sequestration/en/

[114] https://regenerativeresources.co/

[115] Adam Spangler: The Future's Farmer (Vanity Fair, April 23, 2007) https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2007/04/hodges200704

[116] Thomas Tørsløv, Ludwig Wier, Gabriel Zucman: The Missing Profits of Nations (National Bureau of Economic Research, working paper 24701, revised April, 2020) https://www.nber.org/papers/w24701

[117] Richard A. Werner: New Paradigm in Macroeconomics (London, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005)

[118] Richard A. Werner: Princes of the Yen (UK: quantumpublishers.com, 2005)

[119] Richard A. Werner: Shifting from Central Planning to a Decentralised Economy: Do we Need Central Banks? (Paper presented at the 14^th Rhodes Forum: Dialogue of Civilisations research Institute, Panel 2: Economic Alternatives when Conventional Models Fail, Rhodos, Greece, October 1, 2016) pp 27, 35, 38 https://professorwerner.org/category/articles-essays/

[120] https://www.local-first.org.uk/

[121] Ceara Milligan: How Rich Is The Costco CEO And What's The Average Pay Of Its Employees? (mashed.com, March 21, 2021) https://www.mashed.com/361488/how-rich-is-the-costco-ceo-and-whats-the-average-pay-of-its-employees/

[122] Anu Partanen and Trevor Corson: Finland is a Capitalist Paradise (New York Times, December 7, 2019) https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/07/opinion/sunday/finland-socialism-capitalism.html

[123] Lawrence Mishel and Jori Kandra: CEO compensation surged 14% in 2019 to $21.3 million (Washington DC: Economic Policy Institute Report, August 18, 2020) https://www.epi.org/publication/ceo-compensation-surged-14-in-2019-to-21-3-million-ceos-now-earn-320-times-as-much-as-a-typical-worker/

[124] David Marchese: All Wealth is Collective by Nature (New York Times, April 10, 2022) https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/04/03/magazine/thomas-piketty-interview.html

[125] Paul Buchheit: 8 Ways Privatization Has Failed America (commondreams.org, August 5, 2013) https://www.commondreams.org/views/2013/08/05/8-ways-privatization-has-failed-america

[126] Gar Alperovitz and Thomas M. Hanna: Socialism, American Style (New York Times, July 23, 2015) https://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/23/opinion/socialism-american-style.html

[127] Anna H. Glenngård, Lund University School of Economics and Management: International Health Care System Profiles – Sweden (commonwealthfund.org, June 5, 2020) https://www.commonwealthfund.org/international-health-policy-center/countries/sweden

[128] Jeevan Vasagar: German grids restored to public ownership (Financial Times, November 25, 2013) https://www.ft.com/content/2f3b0b1e-4dee-11e3-8fa5-00144feabdc0

[129] Bryce Covert: The U.S. already has a high-quality, universal childcare program – in the military (thinkprogress.org, June 16, 2017) https://archive.thinkprogress.org/universal-military-childcare-9bb2b54bd154/

[130] Davide Scigliuzzo: Charging 589% Interest in the Pandemic Is a Booming Business (Bloomberg, May 17, 2021) https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2021-payday-loan-lenders/

[131] David Leonhardt: The Rich Really Do Pay Lower Taxes Than You (New York Times, October 6, 2019) https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/10/06/opinion/income-tax-rate-wealthy.html

[132] Gabriel Zucman and Gus Wezerek: This Is Tax Evasion, Plain and Simple (New York Times, July 7, 2021) https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/07/07/opinion/minimum-corporate-tax.html

[133] Kate Andrias: The Right to Unionize (New York Times, August 8, 2021) https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/08/04/opinion/us-constitution-amendments.html

[134] Leigh Matthews: The 16 Most Sustainable Cryptocurrencies for 2021 (leafscore.com, June 22, 2021) https://www.leafscore.com/blog/the-9-most-sustainable-cryptocurrencies-for-2021/

[135] Bill Nussey: How much solar would it take to power the U.S.? (freeingenergy.com, July 16, 2018) https://www.freeingenergy.com/how-much-solar-would-it-take-to-power-the-u-s/

[136] Leigh Collins: Global green-hydrogen pipeline exceeds 250 GW – here's the 27 largest gigawatt-scale projects (rechargenews.com, December 21, 2020)https://www.rechargenews.com/energy-transition/global-green-hydrogen-pipeline-exceeds-200gw-heres-the-25-largest-gigawatt-scale-projects/2-1-933755

[137] Michelle Froese: World's first floating wind farm delivers promising results (Windpwer, October 9, 2018) https://www.windpowerengineering.com/worlds-first-floating-wind-farm-delivers-promising-results/

[138] Peter Farley: China's Ambitious Plan to Build the World's Biggest Supergrid (IEEE Spectrum, February 21, 2019) https://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/the-smarter-grid/chinas-ambitious-plan-to-build-the-worlds-biggest-supergrid

[139] Lacy Cooke: Chinese province runs entirely on renewable energy for 7 days (inhabitat.com, June 27, 2017) https://inhabitat.com/chinese-province-runs-entirely-on-renewable-energy-for-7-days/

[140] Peter Fairley: China's Ambitions Plan to Build the World's Biggest Supergrid (IEEE Spectrum, February 21, 2019) https://spectrum.ieee.org/chinas-ambitious-plan-to-build-the-worlds-biggest-supergrid

[141] Eli Dourado: We Need to Build Our Way Out of This Mess (New York Times, August 16, 2021) https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/11/opinion/politics/we-need-to-build-our-way-out-of-this-mess.html

[142] IAEA: Advances in Small Modular Reactor Technology Developments (International Atomic Energy Agency, 2018) https://aris.iaea.org/Publications/SMR-Book_2018.pdf

[143] https://www.nuscalepower.com/

[144] World Nuclear News: GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy's BWRX-300 SMR selected for Saskatchewan (World Nuclear News, June 28, 2022) https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/BWRX-300-SMR-selected-for-Saskatchewan

[145] andlinger center for energy + the environment: Article 2: Small Reactor Families (Princeton University, 2015) https://acee.princeton.edu/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Andlinger-Nuclear-Distillate-Article-2.pdf

[146] https://flibe-energy.com/

[147] Prachi Patel: China Says It's Closing in on Thorium Nuclear Reactor (IEEE Spectrum, August 4, 2021) https://spectrum.ieee.org/china-closing-in-on-thorium-nuclear-reactor

[148] Sören Amelang: Electric highways offer the most efficient path to decarbonize trucks (cleanenergywire.org, February 1, 2021) https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/electric-highways-offer-most-efficient-path-decarbonise-trucks

[149] http://www.commutercars.com/

[150] Sarayan Parathi, Praveen Nagarajan, & Shashikala Aikot Pallikkara: Ecofriendly geopolymer concrete: a comprehensive review (Springer, Clean Technologies, and Environmental Policy 23, 2021) pp.1701-1713 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10098-021-02085-0

[151] Geopolymer Institute: 70,000 tonnes Geopolymer Concrete for airport (1 October 2014) http://www.geopolymer.org/news/70000-tonnes-geopolymer-concrete-airport/

[152] https://www.geopolymertech.com/

[153] David Thorpe: The World's Most Successful Model for Sustainable Urban Development? (smartcitiesdive.com) https://www.smartcitiesdive.com/ex/sustainablecitiescollective/words-most-successful-model-sustainable-urban-development/229316/

[154] Alex Steffen: Imagining Cities That Can Save the Planet (Berkeley, CA: Alex Steffen, 2012)

[155] Aaron Mehta: The world spent almost $2 trillion on defense in 2020 (Defense News, April 26,2021) https://www.defensenews.com/global/2021/04/26/the-world-spent-almost-2-trillion-on-defense-in-2020/

[156] Peter G. Peterson Foundation: The United States Spends More on Defense Than the Next 11 Countries Combined (pgpf.org, July 19, 2021) https://www.pgpf.org/blog/2021/07/the-united-states-spends-more-on-defense-than-the-next-11-countries-combined

[157] Peter A. Kiss: Winning Wars amongst the People – case studies in asymmetric conflict (Nebraska: Potomac Books, A2014)

[158] John Arquilla: Bitskrieg: The New Challenge of Cyberwarfare (Indiana: Polity Books, Wiley), September 14, 2021)

T.I. Friedman - Arquilla interview: Free Advice For Putin: 'Make Peace You Fool' (New York Times, April 13, 2022) https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/13/opinion/putin-ukraine-war-strategy.html

John Arquilla: The New Rules of War (Foreign Policy, February 11, 2010) https://foreignpolicy.com/2010/02/11/the-new-rules-of-war/

[159] William J. Bowers; Pakistan Earthquake Relief Operations – Leveraging Humanitarian Missions for Strategic Success (Washington, D.C.: National Defense University Press, PRISM Volume 2, Issue 1, December 2010)

pp. 131-144 https://ciaotest.cc.columbia.edu/journals/prism%20/v2i1/f_0024111_19660.pdf

Sanders Marble: Skilled and Resolute – A History of the 12^th Evacuation Hospital and the 212^th MASH, 1917-2006 - Chapter 7 provides an account of the experience in Pakistan (Texas, Borden Institute, U.S. Army Medical Department Center & School, 2013) https://ckapfwstor001.blob.core.usgovcloudapi.net/pfw-images/dbimages/MASH%20FM.pdf

[160] Jérôme Viala-Gaudefroy: The idolization of free speech in the United States (theconversation.com, February 22, 2021) https://theconversation.com/the-idolization-of-free-speech-in-the-united-states-155778

[161] Martin Skladany: On the Week of the Election, Social Media Must Go Dark (Wired, October 25, 2020) https://www.wired.com/story/opinion-on-the-week-of-the-election-social-media-must-go-dark/?utm_source=WIR_REG_GATE

[162] Shoshana Zuboff: You Are the Object of a Secret Extraction Operation (New York Times, November 12, 2021) https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/12/opinion/facebook-privacy.html

Also refer to Zuboff's book: The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power (New York: PublicAffairs, 2019)

[163] William James: Proposing the Moral Equivalent of War (Lapham's Quarterly, 1906)

[164] Thomas E. Ricks, a fellow at the Center for a New American Security - summarizes the argument for a mandatory service period: Let's Draft Our Kids (New York Times, July 9, 2012) https://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/10/opinion/-lets-draft-our-kids.html

[165] Adam Nicolson: Seize the Fire – Heroism, Duty, and Nelson's Battle of Trafalgar (London, UK: HarperCollins, 2005)

[166] Milton Meyer: They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45 (Illinois: The University of Chicago Press, 1955)

[167] https://www.nordicsecret.org/the-secret/

[168] Daniel Twining: Taiwan is the future of the Asia-Pacific, not China (NIKKEI Asia, November 15, 2020) https://asia.nikkei.com/Opinion/Taiwan-is-the-future-of-the-Asia-Pacific-not-China

[169] John Carlin: No wonder Iceland has the happiest people on earth (The Guardian, May 18, 2008) https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/may/18/iceland

[170] Emma Young: How Iceland Got Teens to Say No to Drugs (The Atlantic, January 19, 2017) https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/01/teens-drugs-iceland/513668/

[171] Frank C. Adams and Myles Horton: Unearthing Seeds of Fire: The Idea of Highlander (North Carolina: Blair, 1975)

[172] Eduard Lindeman: The Meaning of Adult Education (New York: New Republic, 1926)

[173] John Ralston Saul, The Unconscious Civilization (New York: The Free Press – A Division of Simon & Schuster Inc., 1995)

[174] Alex Mayyasi: When Lobbying was Illegal (Priceonomics) https://priceonomics.com/when-lobbying-was-illegal/

[175] Ezra Klein: Corporations now spend more lobbying Congress than taxpayers spend funding Congress (Vox, July 15, 2015) https://www.vox.com/2015/4/20/8455235/congress-lobbying-money-statistic

CHAPTER FIVE – Risks

[176] Timothy O'Reilly: Frank Herbert (New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., Inc, 1981) Chapter 3, p. 50 https://www.oreilly.com/tim/herbert/

[177] Robert Longley: What Is a Failed State? Definitions and Examples (ThoughtCo.com, July 27, 2020) https://www.thoughtco.com/what-is-a-failed-state-definition-and-examples-5072546

[178] David Gelles: Hubert Joly Turned Around Best Buy, Now He's Trying To Fix Capitalism (New York Times, July 15, 2021)https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/15/business/hubert-joly-corner-office-best-buy.html#:~:text=Now%20He’s%20Trying%20to%20Fix,Joly%20Turned%20Around%20Best%20Buy.

[179] James Osborne: Pew: U.S. power outages rising (The Dallas Morning News, October 27, 2015) https://www.dallasnews.com/business/2015/10/27/pew-u-s-power-outages-rising/

[180] Ayla Ellison: 892 hospitals at risk of closure, state by state (Becker's Hospital CFO Report, March 4, 2022) https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/finance/892-hospitals-at-risk-of-closure-state-by-state.html

[181] Asher Moses: 'Collapse of Civilisation is the Most Likely Outcome': Top Climate Scientists (resilience.org, June 8, 2020) https://www.resilience.org/stories/2020-06-08/collapse-of-civilisation-is-the-most-likely-outcome-top-climate-scientists/#

CHAPTER SIX – Conclusion

[182] Calvin Woodward: $6 trillion spent by U.S. in COVID fight: Warp-speed spending and other surreal stats (Associated Press, March 13,2021) https://www.al.com/news/2021/03/6-trillion-spent-by-us-in-covid-fight-warp-speed-spending-and-other-surreal-stats.html

[183] Sarayan Parathi, Praveen Nagarajan, & Shashikala Aikot Pallikkara: Ecofriendly geopolymer concrete: a comprehensive review (Springer, Clean Technologies, and Environmental Policy 23, 2021) pp.1701-1713 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10098-021-02085-0

[184] https://www.geopolymertech.com/

[185] Leigh Collins: World's largest green-hydrogen plant inaugurated in Canada by Air Liquide (Recharge, January 27, 2021) https://www.rechargenews.com/transition/worlds-largest-green-hydrogen-plant-inaugurated-in-canada-by-air-liquide/2-1-952085

[186] Thyssenkrupp press release (January 18, 2021) https://www.thyssenkrupp.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/pressdetailpage/first-green-hydrogen-project-becomes-reality--thyssenkrupp-to-install-88-megawatt-water-electrolysis-plant-for-hydro-quebec-in-canada-93778

[187] Madeline Ngo: Skilled Workers Are Scarce, Posing a Challenge for Biden's Infrastructure Plan (New York Times, September 12, 2021) https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/09/us/politics/biden-infrastructure-plan.html

[188] Tony Bertuca: DOD makes rare earth award (Inside Defense, February 1, 2021) https://insidedefense.com/insider/dod-makes-rare-earth-award

APPENDIX

[189] Tom H. Inkster: John Frank Stevens, American Engineer (University of Washington, The Pacific Northwest Quarterly, April, 1965) Vol. 56, No. 2, pp 82-85

[190] David Leigh and Like Harding: WikiLeaks: Tunisia knew its rulers were debauched. But leaks still had impact (The Guardian, February 2, 2011) https://www.theguardian.com/media/2011/feb/02/wikileaks-exclusive-book-extract

[191] Constitutional Rights Foundation: Conspiracy Theories: Attacks on Jefferson Set the Pattern (crf-usa.org, BRIA 11 4 c) https://www.crf-usa.org/bill-of-rights-in-action/bria-11-4-c-conspiracy-theories-attacks-on-jefferson-set-the-pattern.html

[192] Sophie Bjork-James: Nearly two centuries ago, a QAnon-like conspiracy theory propelled candidates to Congress (The Conversation, September 2, 2020) https://theconversation.com/nearly-two-centuries-ago-a-qanon-like-conspiracy-theory-propelled-candidates-to-congress-144838

[193] PhosphorusFutures – An initiative of the Global Phosphorus Research Initiative http://phosphorusfutures.net/global-research/#:~:text=The%20Global%20Phosphorus%20Research%20Initiative,can%20ensure%20global%20food%20security.

[194] Catherine Clabby: Does Peak Phosphorus Loom? (American Scientist) https://www.americanscientist.org/article/does-peak-phosphorus-loom

[195] Thorstein Veblen: The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study in the Evolution of Institutions (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1899)

[196] Press Release: World's billionaires have more wealth than 4.6 billion people (OXFAM International, January 29, 2020) https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/worlds-billionaires-have-more-wealth-46-billion-people

[197] Morris Berman: Why America Failed: The Roots of Imperial Decline (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2011) pp. 81-82

David Nye (a student of Leo Marx): American Technological Sublime (Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 1996)

[198] Eduardo Porter: The Hard Truths of Trying to 'Save' the Rural Economy (New York Times News Analysis, December 14, 2018) https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/12/14/opinion/rural-america-trump-decline.html

[199] Binyamin Appelbaum: The Economists' Hour: False Prophets, Free Markets, and the Fracture of Society (Boston, MA: Little, Brown and Company, 2019)