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The Mythology of Progress, Anti-Progress and a Mythology for the 21st Century print $18, (Kindle $8.95, Hardcover $24 (215 pages, 2024)

What if growth--and policies to accelerate growth--are no longer working because our fix for every problem--growth for growth's sake--is failing? We're told Progress is inevitable as a result of technology, but everyday life is getting harder, not easier--the opposite of Progress, what I call Anti-Progress.

What if the real source of the unraveling is far deeper than economics or politics? What if the problem is what we see as the inevitable destiny of humanity--Progress--is actually a modern mythology, disconnected from the real-world consequences of growth for growth's sake?

We indignantly reject that Progress is a mythology, but our need for mythology hasn't gone away because we've mastered technology; we've created a modern mythology of technology that is heedless of its own consequences.

To truly progress, we need a new mythology aligned to 21st century realities. That's the goal of this book.

Read the Introduction

Read the Introduction and first chapter

AI-generated podcast (11 minutes) based on this essay:

We're Told This Is Progress, But It's Actually Anti-Progress

Self-Reliance in the 21st Century print $18, (Kindle $8.95, audiobook $13.08 (96 pages, 2022)

Just as no one was left unaffected by the rise of globalization, no one will be unaffected by its demise. The only response that reduces our vulnerability is self-reliance: de-risk your life by carving a path that works for you.

When Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote his famous essay Self-Reliance in 1841, the economy was localized and households supplied many of their own essentials. In our hyper-globalized economy, we re dependent on distant sources for our essentials.

Emerson defined self-reliance as being our best selves thinking for ourselves rather than following the conventional path. Self-reliance in the 21st century means reducing our dependency on fragile supply chains and becoming producers as well as consumers.

Self-reliance is often confused with self-sufficiency--the equivalent of Thoreau s a cabin on Walden Pond. But self-reliance in the 21st century isn t about piling up money or a cabin in the woods; it s about humanity s most successful innovation: cooperating with trustworthy others in productive networks.

Later chapters address the mindset of self-reliance and 18 nuts and bolts principles of self-reliance in the 21st century.

Read the first chapter for free (PDF)

Read excerpts of all three chapters

Podcast with Richard Bonugli: Self Reliance in the 21st Century (43 min)

When I burned out, what I wanted but could not find was a practical guide by someone who had experienced burnout themselves. None of the material I found spoke to what I was experiencing or to my sense that our economy is now optimized to burn people out.

I decided to write the guide I wanted but could not find. This is my experience of burnout, reckoning and renewal.

I am not an expert in burnout, I am only an expert in my own burnout.

This book is my account of what helped me. The intended audience is other burnouts and those who want to better understand the experience of burnout.

Burnout is a life-changing experience in a good way, as absurd as that may sound to those in the depths of burnout. To paraphrase Samuel Beckett: I can t go on but I must go on. There is a way forward.

Read the first chapters for free (PDF).

Read Understanding Burnout and the Introduction

The Epidemic Nobody Talks About: Burnout

This book is the roadmap to Degrowth that we need to survive as a nation.

National Security is not just military force. In an age of scarcity, security is a degrowth economy of energy independence, social cohesion and civic virtue.

All nations, including the United States, face systemic crises that are reinforcing each other at an explosive point in history. The threats to the republic are unprecedented, but the status quo is incapable of understanding that conventional responses are an accelerant of fatal synergies: the status quo is now the problem rather than the solution.

These novel crises demand an entirely new Grand Strategy. The emergence of solutions is not pre-ordained; the collapse of the state is also a possibility, though far from an ideal one.

The global crisis offers an opportunity to redraw America s Grand Strategy from the ground up. Should we fail to make full use of this opportunity, the United States will fail, along with all the other nation-states that are incapable of redefining the problems so that new solutions become possible.

This revolutionary Grand Strategy will be the deciding factor between nation-states that fail and the few (if any) that will not just survive but actually thrive.

Read Chapter One for free (PDF).

Read the Introduction

Podcasts: A Grand Strategy to Address the Global Crisis (54 min., with Richard Bonugli)

Turmoil Ahead As We Enter The New Era Of 'Scarcity' (53 min., with Adam Taggart)

The world has entered an era of profound uncertainty. The Old Normal is gone for good, and the deck is shifting ominously beneath our feet. Now is the moment to ask: what would a fairer, more sustainable system look like? How would it be better for me, humanity and the planet?

Even before the global upheavals, our system was failing. Now that it's unraveling, it's time for a new arrangement that's actually sustainable on our resource-depleted planet that doesn't favor wealthy insiders. But those gorging on inequality will never accept reforms that strip away their unearned privileges, and so the only practical way forward is a Hacker's Teleology.

What's a Hacker's Teleology? A hack is a workaround in a kludgy, broken system-- a new way of connecting the dots. Teleology means the destination we end up reaching because that's where the dots lead.

In this book I connect the dots of my own life experiences to show how a sustainably fair way of organizing human activity would work. In telling my story, I'm also telling our story, because we all share our limited-resources world and the same aspirations for fairness, belonging, getting ahead and a say in our future.

So let's get started on an arrangement that actually works for all of us--and our world.

Read excerpts of the book for free (PDF).

The Story Behind the Book and the Introduction.

Will you be richer or poorer? What does the future hold for you--and for the world?

Supposedly we're all getting richer, but many of us feel we re becoming poorer. Why?

One reason is our economy doesn t even measure many kinds of wealth and ignores many costs. Clearly, clean air and water, good health and civil liberties are valuable, but you won t find these on any balance sheet. Our system s incentives are to maximize short-term financial profits, and everything else is treated as if it doesn t exist.

This book tackles three critical questions:

What if everything we don t measure is worth more than financial wealth? Our obsession with financial capital is blinding us to a traumatizing global decline in other forms of wealth.

Will artificial intelligence (A.I.) make us all richer? What if A.I. will only enrich the few who own the platforms and technology?

Is our economic model dooming us? We re told we all benefit as the super-rich get even richer, but what if the status quo only benefits those in power at the expense of everyone else--and our planet?

Though we may not be politically powerful, we are far from powerless. This book will help you identify the things that truly matter, and accumulate capital that benefits you and your family-- and our planet.

Read the first section for free (PDF).

I discuss this book with Chris Martenson in a new podcast (51 minutes), which is also available on YouTube.

Will You Be Richer or Poorer?: Profit, Power and A.I. in a Traumatized World (print $12.95) (Kindle $6.95)

America teeters on the precipice: our government is now captive to special interests and big money, twin cancers that threaten our democracy. This accelerating crisis is exacerbated by a toxic social media-fueled tribalism that has replaced what do you think? with which side are you on?

Our crisis isn t just political it s structural: as the pace of change explodes from gradual to non-linear, the organizations that dominate our economy centralized corporations and government become destined to fail. We see this failure in both the soaring inequality that has hollowed out the American Dream as well as in the rising tide of social and political disunity.

To prevent the fall of our democratic republic, we must transform our economy and society from the ground up. As we enter a new era of rapid, unprecedented tumult, it is we citizens who will need to save our democracy. For our political and financial elites will cling to their centralized power, doing more of what s failed, even as civil society unravels.

All is not lost--yet. Our way forward starts with understanding the fatal flaws of our brittle, self-serving status quo and embracing this basic truth: better options are available if we re willing to explore.

To pathfind our way to a better destiny, we must create new localized structures optimized for resilience and adaptability a flexible, decentralized, sustainable, democratic, opportunity-for-all nation.

Read the first section for free in PDF format.

Pathfinding our Destiny: Preventing the Final Fall of Our Democratic Republic (ebook $6.95, print $12.95)

This book started when I asked myself: when we dream of the future of our society, are we hoping for the right things?

The current conventional-wisdom view of our soon-to-be future is rose-tinted: automation will free millions of people from the drudgery of work, then by taxing the robots doing all the work, we can pay everyone Universal Basic Income (UBI), enabling a life of leisure and artistic pursuit for all. The result: A future of Universal Happiness.

But is this accurate? Is this what UBI is actually capable of doing? More importantly, is this what we want?

And even more importantly: will this future be our best future? Will it account for and manage the practicalities of work, money and automation, given the limits of endless growth on a finite planet?

Money and Work Unchained drags the now-popular concept of Universal Basic Income (UBI) from the shadows of Pundit blather into a harsh, illuminating light, and in doing so presents an entirely new view of the future that upends our conventional, foundational, understanding of work and money.

This book lays out a practical pathway that realigns work, money and human fulfillment into a sustainable system that sheds the inequalities and injustices of the status quo in favor of a human-scale way of living.

And it gives us a future to truly hope for.

Read the first section for free in PDF format.

Money and Work Unchained (Kindle ebook $6.95, print $15)

216 pages, ebook $6.95, print $15 (2015)

Automation is upending the global order by eliminating human labor on an unprecedented scale--and the status quo has no solution to this wholesale loss of jobs.

What if we could hit the reset button on the way we create money, work, commerce and community? What if we could design a social economy rather than a merely financial one?

These are not idle questions, for technology now enables us to hit that reset button and organize the creation of money, work, commerce and community in new ways.

If we could start from scratch, what would a new system look like? Clearly, we need a system that offers what the current system cannot: meaningful work for all.

This book is the practical blueprint of a new system that offers opportunities for meaningful work and ownership of the sources of prosperity not just to a few, but to everyone.

A radically beneficial world beckons what are we waiting for?     Read the Introduction and Chapter One (free)

German language edition of Part 1: Eine Radikal Segensreiche Welt Part 1 (Scribd)

A Radically Beneficial World: Automation, Technology and Creating Jobs for All is now available as an Audible audio book.

Ever since my first summer job decades ago, I've been chasing financial security. Not win-the-lottery, Bill Gates riches (although it would be nice!), but simply a feeling of financial control. I want my financial worries to if not disappear at least be manageable and comprehensible.

And like most of you, the way I've moved toward my goal has always hinged not just on having a job but a career.

You don't have to be a financial blogger to know that "having a job" and "having a career" do not mean the same thing today as they did when I first started swinging a hammer for a paycheck.

Even the basic concept "getting a job" has changed so radically that jobs--getting and keeping them, and the perceived lack of them--is the number one financial topic among friends, family and for that matter, complete strangers.

So I sat down and wrote this book: Get a Job, Build a Real Career and Defy a Bewildering Economy.

It details everything I've verified about employment and the economy, and lays out an action plan to get you employed.

I am proud of this book. It is the culmination of both my practical work experiences and my financial analysis, and it is a useful, practical, and clarifying read.

Readers' Own Stories, Introduction and Section One

Things are falling apart that is obvious. But why are they falling apart? The reasons are complex and global.

Our economy and society have structural problems that cannot be solved by adding debt to debt. We are becoming poorer, not just from financial over-reach, but from fundamental forces that are not easy to identify or understand. We will cover the five core reasons why things are falling apart:
1. Debt and financialization
2. Crony capitalism and the elimination of accountability
3. Diminishing returns
4. Centralization
5. Technological, financial and demographic changes

Increasingly complex systems weakened by diminishing returns collapse under their own weight and are replaced by systems that are simpler, faster and affordable. If we cling to the old ways, our system will disintegrate. If we want sustainable prosperity rather than collapse, we must embrace a new model that is Decentralized, Adaptive, Transparent and Accountable (DATA).

We are not powerless. Not accepting responsibility and being powerless are two sides of the same coin: once we accept responsibility, we become powerful.

The next 20 years will not be a simple extension of the previous 20 years. Everything that is currently seen as permanent--the Savior State, the financialized economy, cheap energy-- is visibly unsustainable. Status Quo personal finance strategies--"buy and hold" and global diversification--are doomed by their reliance on increasingly unstable global markets and a myopic focus on the rearview mirror--the recent past is no longer an accurate guide to the future.

This comprehensive guide offers practical ideas for everyone, from those seeking to protect 401Ks or IRAs to entrepreneurs to those with more time than money to invest in their future. This book offers a broad spectrum of strategies for investing your human, social and financial capital in low-risk, decentralized, diversified assets that increase resiliency and self-reliance.

Reader feedback persuaded me that a 400-page book is a daunting prospect for many, and so I decided to create Survival+ The Primer that is only a third the length (48,000 words, 134 pages) of the full version. While it is impossible to distill all the ideas into a short primer, we can at least address these key understandings:
-- The status quo of a rapidly expanding Savior State in thrall to global cartels is heading for inevitable insolvency
-- Though the devolution and insolvency of the debt-based status quo is driven by large-scale forces, the opportunities will be small-scale and open to individuals, families and communities.
-- Though the forces at work are global, we are not powerless. As individuals, we have the power to create our own transformation.

This can be expressed very simply: we are what we do every day.

In a very real way, we "vote" for our health by what we choose to put in our mouths three times a day, just as we "vote" on which kinds of food and companies we support when we buy the food.

Every purchase we make is a "vote" for or against a high-cost, debt-serf lifestyle that serves the interests of Power Elites and cartels.