Post #1823544
2026-04-30 21:59 UTC
I saw a video the other day explaining our persistence in performing the rituals of continual economic growth year after year by likening it to the Cargo Cults that formed in the Pacific after WWII.
We're going through the motions of consumption, consumerism, and expansion, hoping that mid-century prosperity drops from the sky again.
It's like we're treating infinite growth as a law of nature, a gift from our ancestors, completely ignoring that the system we're running is entirely incompatible with the physical constraints of the world we live in.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult
Replies (2)
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@sortius@infosec.exchange 2026-04-30 22:36
@phocks@bne.social the logic behind a cargo cult and our current economic systems is simplistic enough to seem plausible: a thing happened, because we did , so it must happen again. The funniest bit is, they both come from the same place. WWII. Cargo cults because of the actions in the pacific, our current economic system because of post-WWII US corporations being flush with cash. It had nothing to do with the economic systems, they had money to spend, and spend they did
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@Iveyline@mastodon.nz 2026-05-01 06:25
@phocks@bne.social Continuous growth on a finite planet with finite resources is an impossibilty - a bit like a Ponzi scheme that will eventually collapse