Neither Capitalism nor Socialism nor Communism is the Problem

Reality is not pyramids. It is nested, nonlinear systems.

As the old world order unravels, and U.S. economic, political and social instability increases, the debate about which societal model is best for running human civilization burns ever hotter. Most people have strong beliefs for which of these models they think is best for humanity, and that the others are the evils that keep us from moving forward. Each person thinks that their model is best, and that the reason everyone doesn’t see that capitalism, socialism, or communism is the best way to run things is because they just don’t truly “understand” how that model is actually supposed to work.

But neither capitalism, nor socialism, nor communism is the problem.

Given what I stated above, many people will have a very automatic and visceral reaction to this.

But let me ask you one question.

Because this is the question underneath it all.

How do you create a world in which you prioritize the wellbeing and health of life and the planet first, while also maximizing material abundance?

If your answer is “you can’t”, then the problem is you.

You are the problem.

You are the reason none of those models above works.

An Ancient, Primitive Algorithm

Look at each of those models. Look at communism, socialism, and capitalism. None of those systems have actually truly, fully done what they purported to do. Each of those models devolves into the exact same result.

Whether it’s capitalism, socialism, or communism, every attempt at systemic regulation, whatever “-ism” it is, ends up lopsided with a few people on top hoarding wealth, resources, and power, while the collective cowardly bends the knee and lets it happen.

Every single attempt at building complex civilization at scale results in the same algorithm:

Control + Hoard + Extract = Self-Sabotage.

Civilizational Implosion. System failure.

That is about the human brain.

Take, for example, the current "property tax" debate in the real estate world. You’ll hear people like Mitch Vexler on the Real Estate Mindset channel elaborating about the fraud and failure of the public school system, vehemently labeling it the result of the evils of "socialism". Meanwhile, Travis Spencer (the host) calls it "theftalism".

They are both right and both wrong. What they are actually looking at is a public system (socialism) funded by property taxes — which are a direct result of land valuation and private ownership (capitalism) — being run by narrow, extractive brains.

It isn’t "socialism" failing; it’s the inherent inequity of property tax funding meeting the capitalist greed of the real estate market. When those two collide, the 'Ancient Algorithm' simply does what it always does: it extracts value from the children (the future) to feed the hoarding of the present.

It doesn't matter what you call the system if the person running it is still a fearful animal trying to secure its own territory at the expense of the herd.

So what is the real issue?

The issue is that we are animals who are complex enough to build very complex systems, while denying that we are still animals, yet still behaving like animals, running on a very ancient and primitive algorithm.

The Lobster’s Pyramid and Humanity’s Stagnation

In order to drive the point home, let’s take a page out of Jordon Peterson’s book. I know a lot of you who read my work will probably think that that is the last person I would quote, but his argument illustrates where humanity is stuck perfectly. To understand why every "-ism" fails, we have to look at one of his most popular “intellectual” defenses of the status quo: the lobster. 

Jordan Peterson famously argues in his book 12 Rules for Life that because lobsters behave according to strict dominance hierarchies, humans are destined to do the same. He points to 350-million-year-old neurochemistry to argue that the pyramid is the natural order of things.

But Peterson’s “proof” is actually my evidence of humanity’s failure to evolve.

He is using an animal at one of the earliest stages of evolutionary development to justify the behavior of a species that can build spaceships, map the genome, and conceptualize complex systems. He is arguing that the red sea cockroach should be our model for what we build. By anchoring human potential to the behavior of a crustacean, he is advocating for total amygdala dominance of the human brain.

The problem in this is that for the majority of humanity, the pyramid isn't just a social structure. It is their neural map of reality. If your brain inherently runs on a pyramidal, hierarchical model, you are trapped in a perpetual dick measuring contest with the universe. In this primitive algorithm, identity is a zero-sum game. You only know who you are by knowing who is “below” you.

For these people, equity is perceived as erasure. The erasure of the pyramid is felt as the literal death of their selfhood, of identity, of individual uniqueness. Because they have no “Self” underneath the algorithm of “Control + Hoard + Extract”, they cannot conceive of a world where someone isn't being subjugated. To them, if no one is being oppressed, if no one is at the bottom of the pyramid, if there is no pyramid for us all to climb and throw each other off to see who is “best”, then no one is "winning". And if no one is winning the game of being "the best" at climbing the pyramid, then for them, there is no identity.

This is why Peterson is so popular. He gives people permission to stay in the primordial soup. He tells the animal, 'It’s okay to be a lobster'. And people prefer this because it takes an enormous amount of energy to climb out of the soup and learn to breathe real, fresh air.

But we aren't lobsters. We are the species that outgrew the sea cockroach’s shell a long time ago, yet we are still trying to live inside the crustacean's logic.

Reality is not a Pyramid, it is a System

This is why civilizations fail, and why everything is unraveling now. The people who we have endowed with power to run society are stuck in a much earlier brain map that is pyramidal. But reality is not a pyramid. Reality is a system. Everything is systems within systems.

We know this inherently; we talk about the health care system, the school system, we build complex institutions which are systems, but we run them as pyramids.

But systems are nonlinear. They are circular. They are cycles. We also know this. We know about natural systems like the water cycle, the carbon-oxygen cycle, and the mycelial network. These are not pyramid models. They are based on flow and cooperation, and not hoarding.

Can you imagine if the water cycle ran like a pyramid? Suddenly the clouds start hoarding their water because they need to make sure that the Earth knows it is “beneath” them. Suddenly they don’t think they can be clouds unless they start competing with each other for who can hoard and withhold the most water. They release a trickle for the animals down below once in a while just to prove they can. Every so often, they release a raging storm on the planet just to show how powerful they are. They then hoard so much water that all the water on the planet evaporates. That would result in a destroyed planet, and the water cycle would fail. And if the planet fails, then there are no more clouds, because the Earth is not "beneath" the clouds. The clouds are a component of the Earth as a system.

You might think that this illustration is ludicrous, but it is exactly how humans run reality now. Not only do they treat each other this way, they also treat the actual planet this way.

This is why they can’t understand how a giant cold storm like Fern, which is ravaging most of the U.S. now, is evidence of climate change, because they can’t see that climate change is not just “getting hotter”. It is interruption and distortion of a nonlinear system/cycle because of treating it like a pyramid. A giant cold storm is the negative feedback loop of the cycle trying to rebalance itself. The Earth has existed for 4.5 billion years. That is because it is capable of maintaining balanced systems. Humanity is still the cloud, thinking it can dominate and hoard the water, not seeing it is a function inside of the system cycle. This is what comes of running on lobster logic.

Lobster logic — which inherently runs on pyramidal hierarchy — cannot see that systems are nonlinear. They are cycles. They are feedback loops. And this is why “empires” never last much longer than 250 years or so. Empires are pyramids. When you run reality as a pyramid, you never integrate the feedback of the system as it loops and cycles back around. And when you fail to integrate the feedback, the system self eliminates. Cycles are of civilizational failure is not inherent to nature. They are the result of humanity refusing to evolve into nonlinear cognition, which is systems thinking.

Stocks and Flows: The Bathtub of Reality

To understand how we get to where humanity needs to go next, we have to look at how a system actually functions. System theorists use the simple example of a bathtub to explain Dynamic Equilibrium.

In this model, you have three things:

1. The Stock: The water currently in the tub (this represents our resources, our collective health, the stability of the planet. The “things” or components that make up the system).

2. The Inflow: The faucet (what is being added — innovation, solar energy, reproduction, new ideas).

3. The Outflow: The drain (what is being used and lost — waste, death, consumption, decay).

   
   

If the person running the “tub” is an amygdala-dominant human running on a pyramidal model of reality, they only care about one thing: 

The Stock. 

They don't think about the rest of the tub.

To put this in terms we can all feel in our bank accounts and our empty grocery shelves, we have to understand how the stocks in our system (the water in the bathtub) are currently being handled. In a healthy system, we maintain a “full tub” through a balance of giving and taking. Through flow. Through making sure the stocks move through the system, both as input and output, at a balanced rate. But the lobster logic running our world has created a fatal imbalance.

1. The faucet (the input): This is the Earth’s natural abundance, our labor, our creativity, and the care we give one another.

2. The drain (the amygdala-dominant, pyramidal humans): Instead of a system that mindfully recycles water back into the faucet, we have a group of people who we allow to control the faucet, while also acting as severe drains at the bottom of the tub.

   
   

They aren't just "using" the water; they are extracting it out of the system entirely. Through hoarding, through "theftalism", and through a total refusal to see and participate in the cycle, they have opened the drain wide. And the worst part is, they literally can’t see their way to ceasing this behavior, because they operate the cycle of the bathtub while their brain runs on a pyramid model of reality. They think that if they drain all the water out and hoard it, that they “win” and that “winner of reality” is their identity. But they are losers, because they don’t get that when they drain the bathtub, there is no more reality. The system collapses. It is no more.

We are currently at the “gurgling' stage of system implosion. That’s the sound you hear when the last of the water is spinning down the hole. That sound is the social unrest, silver at $100/oz as the currency fails, the storms like Fern, and the collapse of the “-isms” that have thus far failed us all. When the tub is empty, the simulation ends because there is no more water in the tub left to manipulate.

Some of us intuitively know this is happening, even if we don’t have all the language to name it. But then, why do we allow it? These super-drain brains are not in power because they are inherently more worthy of the “top”. They are there because we too have mistaken the pyramid for reality.

For most of us, even the most “enlightened” among us who can name the theft and the extraction, we too have only ever lived within this architecture. To eschew the pyramid is to eschew the only “home” and “safety” we have ever known. To the limbic brain, moving to a circular, systemic model feels like falling into a void. It feels like death because the animal brain cannot distinguish between the end of its cage and the end of the world.

But look at the water cycle again. The cloud doesn't “die” when it releases the rain; it becomes the river. The river doesn't “die” when it meets the sea; it becomes the vastness. We are not losing our identity; we are finally outgrowing a shell that was always too small for a species capable of mapping the stars.

The "death" you feel in letting go of the pyramid model is just the ancient algorithm losing its grip. The amygdala is fighting to hold on to its dominance of the brain. On the other side of that fear isn't a void — it’s the flow. And in the flow, abundance isn't something you have to fight for; it’s something you participate in and shape.

The system is liquefying now. And it is terrifying. But it is antithetical to reality. Stop trying to hold up the ceiling of the pyramid. Let it fall. You were meant to swim in what comes next.

What Comes Next: Stop Fighting About the Isms

The pyramidal model of reality is self-sabotaging, and in order to survive the transition, we do have to have a model of what comes next. But we absolutely, unequivocally, must resist the urge to “name” what that system will be.

Many people want to push their ideal, be it capitalism, socialism, or communism. But the issue with these labels is what I already explained above. Every single attempt to build a new system under one of those labels started with idealistic aspirations and then devolved into the exact same algorithm of Control + Hoard + Extract.

So the reality is, for every person out there who thinks one of those words represents what should come next, there is another person for whom that same "-ism” = Control + Hoard + Extract. History has marinated every one of those "-isms” in too much trauma and baggage. And because language shapes perception, and perception shapes reality, we have to let go of these labels.

Waiting to Name & Spiritual Liminality

I worked as an interpreter/translator with the Hmong community for over 20 years. In that time, I learned a great deal about seeing the world in a much more holistic, harmonious way. In most Western cultures, a baby is named as soon as it is born. But in Hmong culture, a baby is not born the day of its birth. It is not seen as just new “stock” to be named, but as a new soul that affects the dynamism of the family, clan, and social system which is to be honored and integrated for how it functions within the whole.

Because of this more holistic understanding, Hmong tradition often involves waiting until an infant is three days old (during a hu plig or soul-calling ceremony) to name them. A newborn is seen as a “new arrival” whose soul is not yet fully tethered to the physical world. If you name them too early, you make them visible to predatory spirits (the “drains” of the spiritual system).

The lesson for us is that identity is earned and stabilized through relationship and ceremony, whether that be people, or systems. Naming isn't an inherent, static right given at birth; it is a collaborative stabilization of a new “node” in the family network.

When a Hmong person becomes chronically or severely ill, it is often believed that a spirit has “recognized” their name and is tracking them to drain their life force. To protect the person, the family performs a ceremony to change their name. By assuming a new identity, the person becomes “invisible” to the old illness or spirit.

The lesson for Western minds is that we must learn not to confuse naming for being. The "self" is the water, but the "name" is just a container. If the container is cracked and leaking (illness/drain), you get a new container.

This is why whatever comes next for humanity, we must not rush to name what that system is. We must not try to stuff it into one of the old “containers”, the old "-isms”, just because we have over-identified with what those “-isms” were supposed to be. If we try to name prematurely, or affix one of these old “-isms” to what we build in the rubble of the old world, we risk draining the spirit of what can be by tying it to a complicated and traumatic past. We can name the new system we build when we have earned the right to name it, once it has achieved some stability.

This is hard for people because the amygdala prefers certainty, and struggles to sit in uncertainty and ambiguity. The ability to sit in ambiguity is the work of the prefrontal cortex. We are currently in the liminal space between the birth of a new reality and its naming ceremony. The “predatory spirits” of the old world — the debts, the hierarchies, the extraction loops — are circling, looking for a name they recognize so they can latch on.

When we shout “this is socialism!” or “this is the free market!', we are inviting the spirit of the “drain” into the room. To ameliorate this, we must learn the Hmong art and power of Spiritual Liminality. 

Most people think intelligence is having the right answer. But actual intelligence is being able to maintain coherence in the liminal spaces that don’t have names. To be able to hold yourself in the face of enormous transition without rushing to label it is postural integrity. It is true sovereignty. You have a true and authentic self when you are able to be it, without needing to collapse it into a narrow label.

So if you are struggling with the need to rush to name, then just know that this is the work you still need to do.

“But We Can’t Build Utopia!”

Whenever I talk about my vision for the future, people tend to push back on me and say that utopia is not possible, and human nature is what it is.

But I am not trying to build utopia.

I am simply trying to show you that humanity as a whole runs on pyramid-based neural maps, while reality is actually nested nonlinear systems (cycles) at every scale, and that mismatch is why human civilization fails in cycles. I am simply trying to build a system that functions as a system is supposed to. The only reason people respond this way is because of what I already explained above: threatening their neural pyramid map feels like erasure of the self. And their self is based on the idea that anything better than what we have now must erase them, because their identity is based on maintaining the current map at all costs.

But identity is not the map. Identity is the self that remains even when the map is shifting. This is why I am trying to build a system in which people become who they were meant to be, regardless of what the map is called. And we don’t need to parse being into hierarchy to do this. We must think of humanity holistically as a body. The body is not a thing. The body is a system.

Some organs are structurally more critical to system function, sure. The brain and the heart are the powerhouses of the body. But what would the brain be with no body parts to move? What would the heart be with no veins to fill? Perhaps your fingernail seems insignificant. But if you lose one, the loss of it feels much more painful than a heart palpitation. If your fingernail as a protective layer becomes damaged, if infection bypasses that safety layer and enters the blood stream, that infection can become septic (spread through the body) and put the whole body at risk. Suddenly a fingernail doesn’t seem so insignificant.

In a system, we don’t think about hierarchy of parts because in a system, every part helps maintain dynamic equilibrium. This is why the hierarchy-based pyramid model is inherently stupid because it is primitive. It is an earlier stage of neural evolution. It is the model of a lobster brain unable to hold the 4D complexity of nonlinear systems.

That doesn’t mean everyone is equal. I will not endorse the lie that all humans are equally competent and capable in every area. We are not. I am not good at everything, nor do I need to be. And unironically, most of the things I am not good at, are things I am loathe to do. I am not good at things that I don’t like doing. Isn’t it funny how that works?

This is how it is supposed to be. Each of us has specific talents and abilities that are unique to us. In a pyramid model, most people are not doing work that they were meant to do. Most of us have spent our adult lives in jobs we hate, and this is why most of us are unhappy and unfulfilled. But we have to do this because it is the only way to survive in the pyramid model, because the pyramid model doesn’t optimize for systemic structure and function. Our current pyramid model of reality forces a surgeon to be a payroll administrator and a poet to be an accountant just to get healthcare. This is systemic friction that wastes enormous energy and potential.

So once again, I am not trying to build utopia. I am trying to build a world in which we don’t restrict healthcare to having a job as a means to coerce people into staying in jobs they hate, just so the drain-brains can drain their life source out of the bathtub. I am trying to build a world in which each of us is doing the things we are best at doing because that is our natural structure and function in the system. I am trying to build a world in which we place people in jobs that allow them to excel and best benefit humanity by having them do the thing they excel at. I am trying to build a world in which we make sure people don’t have to go into debt for education to learn to excel at what they are good at because their excellence contributes to the wellbeing of the whole.

When we make sure everyone gets placed in what they are best at, in what they are supposed to be doing, we don’t have to worry about the pyramid, because their excellence helps make sure the system maintains dynamic equilibrium. Dynamic equilibirum is what makes the system stable. And that stability is what makes room for you to be able to do what you are best at.

This is not about creating some unattainable utopia or mindless drone commune that erases selfhood. In the pyramid, we use the threat of death (loss of healthcare/housing) to coerce labor. That is erasure. In a system, we use alignment to invite contribution. We don't need to force the heart to beat; it beats because that is its function. We only have to coerce people when we are forcing them to be a part they weren't meant to be.

Even in this context, in this paradigm, there is still room for you to yell at your spouse for using the wrong towels to clean the floor, to shout at the referee for making a bad play call during the college football championship, and stub your toe. You just won’t be running on sea cockroach logic anymore while you do it.

For Further Reading:

Cha, Ya Po. “Name Changing” (Hmong History and Cultural Studies Model Curriculum 2024) https://camodelcurricula.ucdavis.edu/sites/g/files/dgvnsk13911/files/2024-08/Hmong%20Names%20and%20Name%20Changes%20Handouts.pdf

Carleton College. “Hmong Rituals: Birth, Marriage, Death, Healing”. https://religionsmn.carleton.edu/exhibits/show/hmong-religiosity/hmong-rituals-birth-marriage-d

Rice, P. L. “Baby, souls, name and health: traditional customs for a newborn infant among the Hmong in Melbourne”. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10742609/

Bridges, William. “Transitions: Making Sense of Life's Changes”. https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/transitions-making-sense-of-lifes-changes_william--bridges/246969/#isbn=073820904X

Meadows, Donella H. “Thinking in Systems”. https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/thinking-in-systems-a-primer_donella-h-meadows/258994/#isbn=1603580557