Peat, an early yet minor "fossil fuel"
While the phrase "follow the money" is common parlance in progressive circles these days, a more relevant line of investigation for these peak oil times of ours might be, I think, "follow the energy."
Connections between following the money versus “following the energy” are controls over the energy systems, which operate via the methods of organized crime, BECAUSE it is the production of destruction that controls production, and therefore, ALL of the ways that money controls society are actually ways the ENERGY FLOWS through civilizations follow the general energy system laws, which manifested as the methods of organized crimes, & resulted in banksters dominating that.
To clarify a bit, I’m still a bit wary about using the term “bankster” (hence the question mark). That is, I didn’t want to label all bankers as being fond of cheap energy (such as people running the town’s local currency system, if they would even count as being bankers). Perhaps a better description would be “apologists of exploitation”?
I define “banksters” as the biggest gangsters. I believe that the word “banksters” was coined in the 1930s, and that President Roosevelt even used that word sometimes: “Words pop in and out of our language as social conditions change. The American “gangster” has been around as a noun since 1896 according to the Shorter Oxford … another Americanism from the 1930s is the word is bankster, derived by a marriage of banker and gangster. It was coined, it seems, by a lawyer by the name of Ferdinand Pecora, who was the chief counsel to the US Senate Committee on Banking, set up in the early 30s to probe the origins of the Crash of 1929 …” As with any word, not everyone fits its definition to the same degree … There is no generally agreed upon language or set of labels to discuss what happens when the best organized gang of criminals control the government … I have been developing my own use of the English language to try to discuss those profound paradoxes that emerge when governments become the biggest form of organized crime, controlled by the best organized gangs of criminals. (My bla, bla, blah on that topic can be found in the last link appearing on the Web page on our Web site, that contains links to my current favourite “Excellent Videos on Money Systems”)
I noticed your article republished on the Doomstead Diner Web site, and thought it made some worthwhile to note contributions to that discussion. In general, the “apologists for exploitation” are justifying and rationalizing the ways that “money” made out of nothing as debts has “paid” for strip-mining the planet’s natural resources, by turning those into garbage and pollution as fast as possible, in order to keep that debt slavery treadmill going …
As long as it was possible to continue to strip-mine a fresh planet at an exponentially accelerating rate, then the “apologists for exploitation” had a relatively easy job. However, now that we are reaching some of the limits of diminishing returns, their “apologies” no longer are as effectively convincing …
I have generally been engaged in attempts to reconcile political science with physical science. That is the context in which I find reversing the suggestion to “follow the money” to become “follow the energy” an intriguing paradigm flip! My comment above upon your article was made in the context of my overall efforts to attempt to understand how and why human beings operate as entropic pumps of energy flows.
Huh, I wasn’t aware that the term went that far back. Still, as much as I dislike what many bankers do, I’m again wondering if the term “bankster” is a bit too generalizing. I think I’ll refrain from using it again (even with the question mark).
Do follow the energy. But please, please, notice the sun. The future is solar, and increasingly it’s the present. It’s as close to free energy as anyone will get…
I like the way that Wes Jackson put it best: We need to spread ourselves across the land so that we can capture contemporary energy – sunlight! (I take it he’s largely referring to photosynthesis, and to a lesser extent solar panels.)