I found this very compelling, especially the bit about working….
“Down-work, un-work
More work is the source of evils like resource depletion and stress and pointlessly complicated lives; the Earth needs us to stop working so hard! The less we work, the less we feed the Machine. Our work aids the plunder, our de-working slows and stops it, one person at a time. This is why Babylon has always reinforced the message that work is virtuous and important even as it was inventing pointless busywork, harmful work, useless work. Let’s celebrate “Freedom from Labor” Day! Working more is not the way to leisure. Leisure is the way to leisure. Find it before the Machine uses you up and spits you out.
Working less will give the earth a break and repatriate you from ratdom back to humanity. There is plenty of work out there for those who want to do real things, useful things that matter. Once we shed debts and provide ourselves with paid-for basics, money is a small part of the picture. Well-being is what matters, not cranking out a pittance while the planet is plundered more and more. What we need is a “less work ethic”! Less work, less planet being used, more life.”
We can refuse to participate in a dead society gone shopping.
— Joe Bageant
Once we understand what feeds it, it becomes possible to think of stopping the Machine. I puzzled over this one for a long time, only to suddenly grok the obvious: the fodder for the Machine is our precious life energy!
Eeww… 
So then. Deny it its coveted fuel: your effort, your attention and interest, your money, your loyalty, your goodwill and your good ideas. Deny it your streams of energy, one by one. Direct them instead to the Lifeworld. And don’t shout it from the rooftops! Just blend discreetly into one of the various subcultures experimenting nowadays with a saner way of life; the minions and guardians of the Machine will never even notice you.
This is the crux. Any machine can withstand tinkering, but no machine can run without fuel. Like an old mill on…
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Material requirements of 50% wind power in the USA hit limits to growth
Originally posted on 
When people blame the problems of the world on “unregulated capitalism” or “predatory capitalism,” they are implying that capitalism itself is a good and healthy thing. They are implying that we have merely strayed from its sound principles into corruption, a superficial problem that can be cleaned up through reform. But these reformists are mistaken. They have not seen the world as it is; they have not understood what the principles really are. The evils of inequality, externalities, and alienation are inherent in any market economy. To halt the torment and destruction, we’ll have to learn how to share. That didn’t work in some previous attempts, but that just means we’ll have to try doing it differently; the reasons for doing it are still valid. Forcing it on people won’t work, so a change in law won’t be enough; we need a change in culture.
The problem is not “unregulated capitalism.” Writing regulations more carefully will not save us. Satan’s army of lawyers can find him a loophole whenever he wants to escape one of his contracts. And our plutocracy simply disregards its contracts — just look at all of the US government’s violations of its own laws. Money erodes its way through regulations as surely as water finds a way downhill. Any separation between government and big business, between regulators and regulated, is illusory: They share a 
And fighting against 
The old world is dying; we must move on to the new world being born. How will we make the great change? I don’t know the details of that. But it has already begun; you can see it in the peaceful demonstrators being beaten by police. Awareness and understanding are spreading, and our foremost tactic must be to spread them further. When enough people see what is really going on, we will unite, and 
The data in Thomas Piketty’s recent book shows that increasing economic inequality is a normal trend in capitalism, not an aberration. The problem is deeper than debt-based currency or any other particular method of exploitation and theft. It is inherent in all market economies, even barter economies: Market transactions increase inequality, because they 
Increasing inequality is simplified in the board game Monopoly, which always ends with all the players but one totally impoverished. That’s the outcome even if no one cheats, so the problem is in the principles, not in “corruption.”
Psychopaths seek positions of power over others, and even people who are not already psychopaths become corrupted by power if they acquire it; strong evidence of that was given by the Stanford Prison Experiment. We see cruelty wherever the opportunity for it arises — in 
Market prices are far from true costs, because they leave out the externalities. Thus the market is not at all the “wise and efficient” allocator of resources claimed by its worshipers. 
And by the way, the ecocide is a lot worse than most people realize; 
For instance, a few years ago, the Arctic began melting rapidly. That’s one of the climate feedback loops, and it should have been a wakeup call to stop using fossil fuels before they kill everyone. But instead the plutocrats said, “oh goody, now it will be so much easier to extract fossil fuels from the Arctic!”
The market compels its biggest players to compete against each other in offering quick profits to investors, without regard to consequences. Any big players who find scruples will fall behind in the competition, and will be replaced. We need to overthrow not just the big players, but the entire system.
God help 
Our possessions separate us psychologically, and that in turn legitimizes our material separateness. Apathy and alienation seem inevitable and normal. We are forced to compete against each other for survival; friendships become commodities and strategic alliances. We’re distrustful, and our anxiety about lack of security is medically harmful. The wealthy are harmfully stressed too, by their desire to stay ahead, and by their lack of the things that money can’t buy. Lacking meaning, purpose, and direction in our lives, we turn to drugs and entertainments. We see ourselves alone and helpless, and few of us realize that everyone else is alone in much the same way.
The Fall from Grace was 10,000 years ago, with the invention of the word “mine,” and we’ve lived in its shadow ever since. But throughout the 
I’m hoping for a miracle. That doesn’t necessarily involve supernatural intervention; 
