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Why Is Everything Such a Hot Mess? January 12, 2026
Nobody believes that "doing more of what's failed" will actually fail, because to date it's only made insiders rich.
Why Is Everything Such a Hot Mess? Let's summarize the consensus views. 1. Sociopaths are in charge. There are two options: A) the sociopaths gained power through official, legitimate means such as elections or royal bloodlines, or B) the real web of power is hidden from public view and operates behind the screen of official authority. 2. Alternatively, the system itself is sociopathic and so it doesn't matter who's in power, as the system elevates sociopaths to power by its very nature. Yes, there are sociopaths and yes, there are conspiracies. Every corporate price-fixing scheme is a conspiracy that is consciously organized to benefit the few at the expense of the many and protect the conspirators from any negative consequences. These are the defining traits of every conspiracy: pull hidden strings of power for private gain (more power, more wealth, etc.) and moat the conspirators from any consequences. In this view, if we replaced the sociopaths who gained power and exposed the conspirators / hidden web of power to consequences, then we could restore legitimacy, stability and functionality to the system. The alternate view is: since the system itself is sociopathic, the only way to restore legitimacy, stability and functionality is to change the system from the ground up: change the structure of power, oversight, incentives, the whole ball of wax. In a conspiracy, those organizing the hidden web of power know it's wrong which is why they must hide it: exposure means ruin because the system still has the capacity to punish fraud, exploitation, abuse of power, etc. When the system itself is illegitimate and dysfunctional, then those rising up the ladder to positions of power don't see it as wrong; it's simply BAU--Business As Usual, the way things work and have always worked. In this view, perverse incentives have been normalized and are accepted as status quo. So for example, addicting your customers to destructive products and services is an excellent business plan as it maximizes profits while directing the consequences onto the customers, not the corporate leaders who planned and executed the profit-maximizing strategy. Since fraud and exploitation generate higher profits, any CEO that reverses this strategy will be fired for gross incompetence, as the means to increase profits don't matter, only increasing profits matters. Maximizing fraud and exploitation maximizes personal enrichment. But in a sociopathic system, this isn't viewed as wrong, it's BAU--Business As Usual, as the system's explicit goal is the maximization of private gains by any means available. In my book Investing In Revolution, I trace how success and abundance generate sociopathic systems. The process isn't guided by sociopaths, it's human nature amplified by centralized, institutionalized power. The psychology of what appears to participants as permanent abundance goes like this: In the initial boost phase of the organization, success is not guaranteed. Success is contingent on the organization fulfilling its real-world purpose: transparent, competent governance, making products of enduring value and functionality, etc. This requires feedback from the real world that hasn't been filtered, as filtered feedback generates false signals, and responding to false signals leads to failure. The leadership of the organization understands this and accepts accountability, for the organization won't survive contact with the real world if leaders are not accountable for failures. Feedback and accountability are transparent out of necessity. This changes once the organization has institutionalized its success. The perception of those inside the organization changes: the organization is now viewed as so stable and successful that its existence is no longer contingent; it's guaranteed. Insiders no longer have to concern themselves with feedback and accountability; the focus shifts to maximizing private gains. Since the organization is permanent and rich in resources, revenues and political protection/power, there's no need to invest in maintaining feedback or accountability, as the system basically runs itself via rules that govern the centralized hierarchy. The organization selects those amenable to hierarchy and obeying rules. Those applying for positions self-select: those who chafe at hierarchy and rules quit. Over time, this leads to leadership optimized for following rules and protecting the organization from consequences. Those with the capacity to adapt to sudden changes by reworking the entire organization on the fly have been weeded out by either self-selection or the optimization of business as usual, i.e. the artifices of filtering feedback, limiting accountability and defending the organization from negative consequences. So when the time inevitably comes where radical re-organization is the sole path to survival, there's no organizational memory to tap and nobody in the organization with the ability to manage it. The leadership will simply increase the resources devoted to artifice--bogus statistics, happy-story narratives, fake reforms, and so on. To serve these now-embedded goals of filtering feedback, limiting accountability and defending the organization from negative consequences, insiders modify the organization's rules of the game incrementally, eroding the authenticity of feedback and loosening accountability, as these modifications increase private gain and reduce exposure to consequences. Once exposure to consequences has been eliminated, accountability is lost and the system loses the capacity to self-correct: feedback is edited/curated to maintain the appearance that the organization is fulfilling of its purpose admirably and the leadership is fully accountable, i.e. the leaders will experience negative consequences for the organization failing to fulfill its purpose. This dismantling of feedback, accountability and consequence isn't a conspiracy or a takeover by sociopaths; it's all being done by perfectly average people who take their kids to soccer practice, etc., just like everyone else. They don't see the erosion because it started long before they grasped the first rung in the ladder to authority. They're blind to the erosion of real feedback and accountability, and so they're blind to this erosion leading to the organization's failure to fulfill its purpose. Since the organization rewards optimizing the tools of artifice--filtering feedback and moating the leadership from consequence--that's how to they use their power: increase the artifice because restoring authentic feedback and accountability threatens not just their personal self-enrichment but the legitimacy and stability of the entire organization. So they vigorously pursue doing more of what's failed until the consequences of the corrupted feedback and loss of accountability lead to Model Collapse: the entire model that generates the rules that guide the organization collapses in a heap. That's how everything became such a hot mess. Nobody believes that doing more of what's failed will actually fail, because to date it's only made insiders rich. Ultimately, this leads to a stark choice nobody accepts as inevitable: invest in Business As Usual or Invest In Revolution. Doing more of what's failed doesn't generate success, it simply accelerates the collision with consequences. But nobody inside the organization believes this, as doing more of what's failed has been wildly successful for their entire career. 
It didn't have to be this way. Of course it did. The causal chain leaves no other option. My new book Investing In Revolution is available at a 10% discount ($18 for the paperback, $24 for the hardcover and $8.95 for the ebook edition). Introduction (free) Check out my updated Books and Films. Become a $3/month patron of my work via patreon.com Subscribe to my Substack for free My recent books: Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases originated via links to Amazon products on this site. THE REVOLUTION TRILOGY: Investing In Revolution Ultra-Processed Life The Mythology of Progress Systemic Problems/Solutions Investing In Revolution (2025) Introduction (free) The Mythology of Progress (2024) Introduction (free) Global Crisis, National Renewal (2021) Introduction (free) Money and Work Unchained (2017) Introduction (free) A Radically Beneficial World (2015) Introduction (free) What You Can Do Yourself Ultra-Processed Life (2025) Introduction (free) Self-Reliance in the 21st Century (2022) Introduction (free) When You Can't Go On: Burnout, Reckoning and Renewal (2022) Introduction (free) Get a Job, Build a Real Career and Defy a Bewildering Economy (2014) Intro (free) Novels The Adventures of the Consulting Philosopher Intro (free) The Secret Life of an Asian Heroine First chapters (free) Become a $3/month patron of my work via patreon.com. Subscribe to my Substack for free Investing In Revolution print $18, (Kindle $8.95, Hardcover $24 (145 pages, 2025) 
Only now do we see that we've been investing in revolution for decades--not the revolutions we thought we were investing in, revolutions in technology and finance, but in the social revolution made inevitable by the extremes that we've reached in our single-minded pursuit of private gains.
The pendulum that we've pushed to an extreme will swing to the opposite extreme, and the artifices that have propped up a facade a stability for decades will accelerate the disorder rather than reverse it. We now stand at the point of decision, and this book offers a path to a reformation and renewal that serves the shared interests of us all, not just the few. Introduction (free) Ultra-Processed Life print $16, (Kindle $7.95, audiobook, Hardcover $20 (129 pages, 2025) 
Ultra-Processed Life: the substitution of a synthetic, commoditized, very profitable facsimile for what was once authentic.
Ultra-Processed Life is my term for everything that is analogous to ultra-processed snacks: attractively marketed, instantly alluring, easy to consume, addictive by design, tasty in the moment but harmful over time, its origins a black box of unknown processes, the brightly colored product bearing no resemblance to the real-world ingredients, an idealized form of what is inherently imperfect, untethered from the natural world. As with many others, the catalyst for my exploration was a life-threatening medical crisis that did not have a specific cause. This led me to wonder if our entire way of life is like an ultra-processed snack: tasty but not healthy, edible but stripped of the nutrients we need to be healthy, addictive by design. Introduction (free) The Mythology of Progress, Anti-Progress and a Mythology for the 21st Century print $20, (Kindle $9.95, Hardcover $24 (215 pages, 2024) audiobook, Read the Introduction and first chapter for free (PDF) 
What if the policies to accelerate growth are no longer working because our fix for every problem--growth at any cost--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. Read the Introduction and first chapter for free
Recent entries: Why Is Everything Such a Hot Mess? January 12, 2026 The Perverse Incentives Dominating Our Lives January 8, 2026 We Can Discern Cycles and Waves, But Not the Outcomes January 6, 2026 Channeling Napoleon and Chou En-Lai January 5, 2026 Pretense, Staging, Expediency: the "Solutions" That Implode the Whole Shebang January 1, 2026 Everyone's a Lender Now: Shadow Banking USA December 29, 2025 The Good News Is People Are Realizing We're On Our Own December 26, 2025 My Christmas Letter December 23, 2025 Insane Financial Imbalances and Social Revolution December 19, 2025 All the Dominant Models Are Collapsing December 17, 2025 The Wile E. Coyote Insight: What We "Know" Is More Dangerous Than the Unknown December 15, 2025
The Perilous Journey Ahead
December 13, 2025
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Extra-Special Bonus Aphorisms:
"There is no security on this earth; there is only opportunity." (Douglas MacArthur) "We are what we repeatedly do." (Aristotle) "Do the thing and you shall have the power." (Ralph Waldo Emerson) "Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction." (E.F. Schumacher, via Tom R.) "He who will not risk cannot win." (John Paul Jones) "When we drink coffee, ideas march in like the army." (Honore de Balzac) "Progress is not possible without deviation." (Frank Zappa, via Richard Metzger) "Victory favors those who take pains." (amat victoria curam) "The man who has a garden and a library has everything." (Cicero, via Lee Bentley) "A healthy homecooked family meal and a home garden are revolutionary acts." (CHS) "Do you know what amazes me more than anything else? The impotence of force to organize anything." (Napoleon Bonaparte) "The way of the Tao is reversal" Or "Reversal is the movement of Tao." (Lao Tzu) "Chance favours the prepared mind." (Louis Pasteur) "Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm." (Winston Churchill) "Where there is ruin, there is hope for treasures." (Rumi) "The realm of gratitude is boundless." (CHS, 11/25/15) "History doesn't have a reverse gear." (CHS, 12/22/15) Smith's Law of Conservation of Risk: Every sustained action has more than one consequence. Some consequences will appear positive for a time before revealing their destructive nature. Some consequences will be intended, some will not. Some will be foreseeable, some will not. Some will be controllable, some will not. Those that are unforeseen and uncontrollable will trigger waves of other unforeseen and uncontrollable consequences. (July 8, 2014)(thanks to Lew G. for retitling the idea.) Smith's Neofeudalism Principle #1: If the citizenry cannot replace a kleptocratic authoritarian government and/or limit the power of the financial Aristocracy at the ballot box, the nation is a democracy in name only. The Smith Corollary to Metcalfe's Law (The Network Effect): the value of the network is created not just by the number of connected devices/users but by the value of the information and knowledge shared by users in sub-networks and in the entire network. (CHS, 4/6/16) My Credo of Liberation: I no longer care if the power centers of our society--the distant, fortified castles of our financial feudal system--are changed by my actions, for I am liberated by the act of resistance. I am no longer complicit in perpetuating fraudulent feudalism and the pathology of concentrated power. I no longer covet signifiers of membership in the Upper Caste that serves the plutocracy. I am liberated from self-destructive consumerist-State financialization and the delusion that debt servitude and obedience to sociopathological Elites serve my self-interests. (Thank you, Klaus-Peter L., for reminding me) "We've become a culture of excuses rather than solutions: solutions always require sustained effort and discipline." (CHS 4/9/16) "Fraud as a way of life caters an extravagant banquet of consequences." (CHS 4/14/16) "Creativity = problem solving = value creation." (CHS 6/4/16) "Truth is powerful because it is the core dynamic of solving problems." (CHS 7/21/17) "We live in a system of human emotions that masquerades as a science (economics)." (CHS 1/1/18) "Always remember, your focus determines your reality." (George Lucas) "Diversity is for poor people. Sameness is for the successful." (GFB) "When power dissipates suddenly, it dissipates completely." (CHS 7/14/19) "Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves." (Henry David Thoreau) "Markets cannot price in the value of non-monetized natural assets such as diverse ecosystems." (CHS 7/14/19) "Magical thinking isn't optimism, it is folly." CHS 1/3/22) "Tune in (to self-reliance), drop out (of hyper-consumerism and debt-serfdom) and turn on (to relocalizing capital and agency)." (CHS 1/5/22) "The path to everything you desire starts here: like yourself as you are right now." (CHS 11/20/22) "There are only two signals: how many essentials you produce and share and if you're consuming less with better results. Everything else is noise." (CHS 12/17/22) "Liberation is no longer needing any confirmation or feedback from others or the world for one's sense of self. Wealth, fame, recognition, admiration, praise, prestige, approval, sainthood, martyrdom, success: none are needed, none are desired." (CHS 12/26/22) "When fame, wealth, prestige, status and glory are out of reach, you're free to pursue other more valuable things." (CHS 2/6/22) "It is the sacred duty of every activist who seeks to better their community to grow and share as much life-giving food as is humanly possible." (CHS 6/15/23) "Being anonymous, gray and unknown is the ideal state of freedom." (CHS 3/15/24) "We seem to have entered a world of anti-leisure and anti-productivity in which the unpaid shadow work demanded to keep all the complicated digital bits in motion obliterate our leisure and productivity." CHS (5/22/24) "It is axiomatic that failing systems work the best just before they fail catastrophically." Ray W. "Looking younger is mere technique; thinking younger demands creativity." CHS (10/16/24) "Tell me what's taboo and I'll tell you the truths that threaten the status quo." CHS (12/15/24) "This is the core of the Attention Economy: the ultimate addiction is the addiction to ourselves." CHS (1/28/25) "If You Seek the Truth, Look for What's Taboo." CHS (7/18/25) "My definition of self-reliance: the less you need, the easier it is to get what you need." CHS (7/26/25) "Mastery requires reading and doing." CHS (7/28/25) "The replacement of authentic value, quality, agency, choice, trust, legitimacy and experience with self-serving facsimiles is the key dynamic of Ultra-Processed Life, my term for the present-day human condition." CHS (8/12/25) "Ultra-Processed Life replaces an authentic experience with a synthetic, simulated, commoditized, highly profitable version that's superficially attractive but destructive over the long term." CHS (8/12/25) "What we see everywhere is the replacement of authentic things--including democracy--with synthetic facsimiles designed to maintain the illusion of choice and value." CHS (8/12/25) "Sometimes certainty is the enemy we don't even see and uncertainty is our most faithful ally." CHS (9/20/25) |
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