Human civilization and the natural ecology we depend on are facing a polycrisis at a scale and complexity that humanity has never faced before.
There is no one cause of this slow-boil crisis, there is a tangled graph of dependencies, the best one can do is follow the dependencies to discover the most consequential nodes (the “rootiest roots”, if you will).
I would argue the rootiest root is the principal agent problem; the fact that the most powerful industrial-age institutions (corporations, states, philanthropy, medical establishment, etc) are heavily invested in consumption-maximization and symptomatic solutions. The very entities we’re depending on “solving” the polycrisis are in fact the most heavily invested in the existing status quo. On a fundamental level these institutions must prioritize their own short-term survival over long-term collective outcomes, and this misalignment is at the core of our polycrisis.
Historical analogy helps to provide guidance, and our current situation has powerful rhymes with the American Gilded Age / Second Industrial Revolution (1880 - 1910), and the arguments I make here have nearly 1:1 equivalents for that period.
Corporations:
Consumption-maximization: corporations benefit from increasing consumption irrespective of baseline needs. This overconsumption, especially of industrial goods, is a massive piece of global ecological degradation.
Symptomatic solutions: Picture a hypothetical scenario. I have a skin condition which can be solved symptomatically by periodically reapplying lotion or it can be solved once by changing diet and lifestyle. A corporation has strong incentives to offer symptomatic solutions that ensure recurring revenue because it means their continued continued existence; they do not have an incentive to put themself out of business (which would required for root solutions).
There are a variety of ways that goods and services are oriented to superficially or incompletely address needs in order to increase consumption. Fast food prioritizes taste and calories while being nutrient-poor; the combination of co-opting senses while providing incomplete nutrition drives further consumption. Marketing and social media feed a prevailing sense of not-enoughness which drives lifestyle competition, covert inadequecy, and FOMO, and with it, further consumption. Pharmaceuticals offer drugs that alleviate symptoms while created diverse second and third order effects, which in turn require more drugs “to solve”. Consumer electronics have artificial obsolescence built in to ensure a cadence of buying. The principal agent problem helps account for a variety of perverse outcomes.
Higher degree of competition can help check the degree to which these “solutions” are covertly parasitical, but even then, corporations inherently are inclined towards overconsumption and symptomatic thinking. It’s important to note that there’s a critical threshold of incumbents: if there are more than 5-7 incumbents within a given market (it differs by market) it’s difficult for incumbents to collude, so they’re forced to compete. Below this threshold, they are naturally incentivized to collude. Collusion doesn’t have to be explicit. Over time collusion can translate into capture of the state and regulatory bodies which are intended to keep corporations in check.
States:
States also survive on recurring revenue: taxes. As a taxes come from existing businesses, they too are invested in consumption and symptomatic thinking.
If there’s excessive business consolidation, competition turns into collusion, and sustained lobbying can capture state representatives. Often this capture translates into deregulation of state watchdogs and further corporate entrenchment. In contrast, within a competitive landscape lobbyists represent a more diverse set of corporate interests which are more likely to converge on fair and net positive rules, but rules that will likely still favor overconsumption.
Philanthropy:
Philanthropy emerges out of wealth inequality. Wealth inequality emerges out of business consolidation. When there are enough corporations competing within a given market, profits are allocated to R&D and investments to remain competitive. When the number corporations falls below a critical threshold competition turns into tacit collusion. At this point entrenchment deepens and the cartel can raise prices arbitrarily. It can collectively reduce investments. It can increase stock buybacks and dividends. All these moves benefit Wall Street at the expense of Main Street. It’s within this setting that the mega wealthy give back to philanthropic institutions to improve their public image, buy influence, and reduce their tax burden. Philanthropy suffers from principal-agent problems: it cannot tackle the issues that relate to the root causes of their funding: wealth inequality, business consolidation, state capture, etc.
Between these three institutions, a key factor is degree of business consolidation, it’s a second-tier “rootiest root” which begets corporate collusion and entrenchment, state capture, and wealth inequality, which in turn beget more consolidation. Cycle. As this feedback loop continues, institutional incentives become more and more dramatically misaligned with the people broadly (with the notable exception of shareholders).
Medical establishment:
Similar to the state, the medical establishment has been co-opted to act as a distribution network for pharmaceutical companies. The focus of the therapy-medical establishment is to restore individuals enough functionally to work. While the tide may be beginning to change, it’s my impression that mainstream therapy is still focused on a regime of pathologize-and- medicate. This regime scapegoats individuals, interpreting behaviors as “problems within them” (“disorders” like ADHD, depression, anxiety, etc) which require medication to remediate.
This regime is a form of institutional gaslighting; these “disorders” are coping mechanisms against capitalism and educational institutions built around coercion, competition, and alienation, as well as being trapped in terrible and stifling nuclear family dynamics (the fact children cannot leave their nuclear family means (1) they have no other point of reference and (2) they’re focused to develop deep internal coping mechanisms).
If certain “disorders” are broadly shared by a majority of people within a society it’s absurd to personalize responsibility; these are obviously and undeniably systemic. Pathologizing and medicalizing “disorders” is a form of scapegoating and gaslighting so we do not look at the real culprits: shitty and compromised social systems.
This gaslighting represents an instance of a second-tier “rootiest root”: methods of obfuscation designed to individualize problems and prevent us from making individual and collective sense of the bigger picture. In my thinking, obfuscation is downstream of the principal agent problem — the function of gaslighting and obfuscation is to manipulate the principal into not seeing the principal agent problem. The problem is within them rather than compromised agents.
Advertising, social media, and to a lesser extent, entertainment (television, movies, music, sports) all tacitly individualize and personalize our problems so we internalize a sense of shame, a sense of these problems arise out of us rather than our social systems. This is a powerful method of obfuscation that ensures we remain in an alienated and impotent position, rather than what we should be: boiling over with collective rage. The function of anger is to protect boundaries. Rage is the culmination of a lifetime of transgression into the deepest recesses of our psychology, including our self-respect, sense of dignity, sense of reality and belonging within the world.
Industrial-age institutions are jointly invested in a paradigm of infinite consumption and obfuscation about root problems — which is ruinous to the ecology humans depend on.
How to eliminate or dramatically reduce the principal agent problem?
The only way to eliminate the principal agent problem is by removing the agent, which requires building personal autonomy. (There are incentive schemes that help reduce agency costs but for the sake of brevity I won’t go into them here)
Personal autonomy cannot occur at the individual level. “No man is an island”. The lowest level of practical autonomy is at the communal level. Kibbutzes are an excellent example of communal autonomy (and of successful industrial-age communism).
At the communal level there are two approaches to autonomy. Autonomy through independence or autonomy through interdependence. The former is full self-sufficiency. This approach inherently foregoes the benefits of modern technology and society. I would not recommend this approach. The latter strikes a better balance of disintermediation while also benefitting from being part of an industrial society. A greater degree of autonomy creates the capacity to cut out misaligned agents; this threat helps to ensure agents remain sufficiently aligned with their principal. This allows the best of both worlds, of benefitting agents when they’re needed, but not becoming compromised through over reliance.
Community has the greatest incentive to solve problems at the root because they suffer the direct consequences and costs from them. As a result, community is also the most invested in preventative thinking.
Looking at the historical emergence of religions such as Buddhism and Protestantism, there is a symbiotic relationship between local level community and religion, and religion is a way of codifying win-win practices and preventative practices at the communal level (“morality”). In other words, religion is the theory of solving roots needs, achieving win-wins, and preventing problems while communal living is the site of practice.
Religion can also suffer from principal agent problems; Buddhism and Protestantism were both examples of “cutting out the middle men” of the priestly Hindu caste and Papal power structure, who were analogously gaslighting believers through notions of caste and indulgences. This is where deep embeddedness within community in both the Buddhist sangha and Protestant congregation is a key element of agency cost minimization.
I have seen in my own life how community living has shifted my perspective towards root solutions and prevention. There are a lot of problems within community, but it also creates sandbox for sensemaking and problem solving. Community is a complex system; living within community has completely changed how I see causality. Time and time again I’ve seen how causality is less about specific constituents parts and more about dynamics between them. These dynamics are emergent dances rather than intrinsic qualities. Incidentally, this way of thinking applies to our relationship with nature; communal thinking provides a powerful sandbox for ecological thinking. Life becomes much more poetic, magical, chaotic, mysterious in a world of coalescing causality. At the same time, by solving problems time and time again I’ve built moral fiber, belief in our collective capacity to rise to the occasion and Get Shit Done.
While corporations are incentivized to “increase revenue and profit”, building communal autonomy is synonymous with “cutting consumption and costs”. Needless consumption represents outflows of resources to external dependencies. Reduction means needs are internally sourced and addressed within the community.
“Cutting consumption and costs” is the required mindset to address ecological problems at the root. It is the required mindset to begin seeing the gap between perceived and real needs. We may think we need our own car or home — but do we? I’ve seen in my own life how communal living has changed my relationship to ownership. The more you share, the higher the quality of the collective object. Let’s say two houses each have a sauna. If they consolidate to one the shared sauna can be higher quality. Often overhead is a significant cost, and consolidation enables significant increases in quality and efficient usage of infrastructures. In turn this is highly aligned with consumption reduction. In other words, quality of life and efficiency goes up dramatically and per capita costs fall. Wins all around; it almost sounds too good to be true. The hard part is communication and coordination. I believe this a tractable problem, and there are a variety of new communicational and computational tools we can use for better coordination.
The beauty of community is that no one can stop you from re-communalizing. Through communal living, change and autonomy starts at home, and there’s no way to stop it once it starts. Once this awareness begins, community and associations become the primary defensive structures to defend us against industrial-age institutions.
Ecological regeneration must be a whole-society effort, through re-communalization and adoption of a “build autonomy, cut consumption and costs” attitude I think regenerative practices become common sense, they’re simply in our best interests and apply equally to a communal context. By starting at home, everyone has a path to getting “in the game”. In theory we can do “everything all at once”, which will be required to confront the polycrisis on each front.
The principal agent problem is reigned in by asserting control and responsibility over our own lives, first and foremost by recognizing community as a path to agency, and home as a first site of radical re-communalization. Change starts at home.