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Please like and share this essay to spread awareness.

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Jan 29Liked by Antonio Melonio

I’m 35 and I’ve been working since I was 12 years old. Full time working by the age of 16. I barely remember what it’s like to not work anymore.

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You deserve some peace, my man.

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This is a pretty accurate prediction I think.

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Jan 29·edited Jan 29

Hello neighbour, greetings from Slovenia. I've been reading your essays for a while, but I don't comment much. I usually agree with most what you have to say, including this piece. However, I'll use this opportunity to suggest something that's tangential to today's topic, but may add another layer of nuance to your already intricate analysis of our predicament. I'd love to hear your opinion on how Howard T. Odum's concept of maximum power principle ties into what you're describing (an example, the section on economics is toward the end: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsta.2022.0290). My background is in STEM, so it fascinates me to no end on how we may only be playing out a mere thermodynamic principle. Of course if we zoom in, this is a gross oversimplification, but as a second- or third-order effect ... An eerie systemic self-selection/self-organisation. For today's topic, this is relevant in the sense that children are a currently an untapped "source" of power for the system to use and dissipate, so if it can, it will. Effectively it proves your predictions right.

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Thank you Antonio🙏

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Actually capitalism is easy to understand. It is a cultural construct. A social scaleup tech that enabled growth in output per person by creating a form of prestige involving capital accumulation.

https://mikealexander.substack.com/p/how-cultural-evolution-works

We had a better kind of capitalism 60 years ago. It did not disappear because of "structural changes" but rather because of policy. We probably could return to what we had then by changing policy,

https://mikealexander.substack.com/p/why-the-postwar-prosperity-was-not

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Global South?

Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean, Eastern Europe and everywhere in Asia is basically North of the Equator.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_child_labour_rate

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