I’m bestselling indie writer Teague de La Plaine. This is my weekly newsletter, where I talk about writing and self-publishing in addition to my own life. I keep the newsletter free, because I prefer you spend your money on my books.
As I build the worlds for my sci-fi stories, I’ve found myself studying the real systems that shape this one—government, economy, religion, the military, education, and media. What began as research for future civilizations has turned into an audit of our own. This series of essays is part of that exploration: a search for what our systems actually do, and how we might start designing better ones—here, now, before fiction catches up with fact.
Myths & Money
Every civilization tells itself a story about wealth. The current one is that capitalism—left to its own genius—creates prosperity, freedom, and innovation. Work hard, compete fairly, and you’ll rise. Markets are moral, merit finds reward, and everyone wins eventually.
But if we apply Stafford Beer’s rule—the purpose of a system is what it does—the story collapses. Because what capitalism does is not universal prosperity. It creates inequality as reliably as gravity creates fall.
The Faith of the Market
Capitalism long ago became a theology. Invisible Hand as god, Profit as sacrament, Growth as gospel. We tithe our time to employers and pray that compound interest saves us in old age. “The economy” is invoked like a weather system—uncontrollable, yet somehow our fault when it storms.
This creed hides its machinery. Most people experience “the market” as anxiety: rent rising faster than pay, medical debt mounting, pensions shrinking. But the system itself is healthy by its own definition—profits are up, shareholders rewarded, GDP expanding. POSIWID: it’s working exactly as designed.
The Extraction Engine
Capitalism’s real genius isn’t production; it’s extraction. Every product is an event of depletion—of soil, of water, of labor, of attention. It externalizes the cost and privatizes the gain.
Consider the supply chain for a smartphone or a steak. The inputs are distant, the waste invisible. Value concentrates at the top of the chain, while risk and ruin cascade downward. If that pattern repeats across industries, that’s not malfunction—it’s design logic.
Profit doesn’t reward contribution; it rewards leverage. Those who own, win. Those who labor, spin.
Growth Without End
Infinite growth on a finite planet is a suicide pact disguised as optimism. Yet every quarterly report, every government policy, every “recovery” plan depends on it. Growth is our civic religion’s heartbeat; stopping it feels like death.
But the planet is already in triage. Ecosystems can’t compound. Species can’t scale. We are burning the roof to keep the basement warm.
The Myth of Merit
The market loves to preach meritocracy, but inheritance, geography, and timing matter more than talent. Luck masquerades as virtue; poverty as moral failure. The narrative keeps the workforce compliant—if you’re struggling, you just haven’t hustled hard enough.
That’s how exploitation becomes self-policing. People flog themselves for systemic outcomes.
The Metrics That Matter
Run the POSIWID checklist:
Does the system distribute wealth or concentrate it? — Concentrates.
Does it reward contribution or ownership? — Ownership.
Does it regenerate or deplete? — Depletes.
Does it liberate time or consume it? — Consumes.
By output, the real purpose of capitalism is the perpetual concentration of capital. Everything else—freedom, innovation, merit—is marketing.
The Psychological Trap
Capitalism survives not just by producing goods but by producing selves. It shapes identity around consumption. To belong is to buy; to rest is to fall behind. The result is a permanent low-grade panic—millions of people chasing “enough” that never arrives.
Debt becomes the leash that keeps the dream close but unreachable.
The Corporate State
Government and economy are now fused—a single apparatus with two faces. One writes laws; the other funds campaigns. Bailouts for corporations, austerity for citizens. Regulation as theater.
When lobbyists write policy, when think tanks draft doctrine, when public money guarantees private profit—capitalism stops being an economy and becomes a regime.
The Human UNity Alternative: Cosmonomics
If the old system’s purpose is concentration, the new one’s purpose must be regeneration.
Cosmonomics—from cosmos (order) and nomos (stewardship)—is the economic framework of Human UNity. It measures success by well-being within planetary boundaries, not by growth beyond them.
Key principles:
Sufficiency over surplus. Design for enough.
Commons over commodities. Treat air, water, data, and knowledge as shared inheritance.
Automation for liberation. Let machines do the drudgery, not the domination.
Open accounting. Every resource flow transparent; no black budgets, no hidden externalities.
Local resilience, global solidarity. Production near need, knowledge shared without borders.
In Cosmonomics, profit is replaced by prosperity: the health of systems and beings, not numbers on a ledger.
The Warrior’s View
In the field you learn that logistics, not rhetoric, decides victory. If your supply chain poisons its own water source, the mission dies. Capitalism has been drinking its own fuel.
A sustainable economy isn’t sentimental—it’s strategic. Regeneration is national security on a planetary scale.
Closing the Loop
The purpose of the current economy is what it does: extraction, exhaustion, inequality. The purpose of the next economy must be what it proves: balance, restoration, enough.
Human UNity doesn’t demand martyrdom; it demands measurement. Systems that truly serve life won’t need PR—they’ll show it in the data.
A civilization that calls itself advanced should finally produce an economy that behaves like one.
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