Gross Domestic Entropy

The social ‘ecosystem’ is immensely variable, but those social forms that persist do so because they are ‘successful’. They are able to extract sufficient energy from their environment to maintain themselves, just as different species of living organisms exploit different ecological niches.

The conversion of solar energy into biomass is a useful metric for the health of the biosphere. When the amount of energy being converted into biomass is growing then the biosphere is thriving, when the conversion rate goes down then the biosphere is dying.

Each individual and social grouping therefore has a Gross Domestic Entropy – the amount of energy they are either capturing or releasing.

The only valid measurement of our individual and collective success is whether we are creating order or chaos. Chaos can be a lot of fun, for awhile, just don’t tell the children we partied, while the Earth burned.