The end of extraction and the rise of abundance

I’ve been following RethinkX for years — their work consistently challenges how we think about technology and the future. So when I sat down with James Arbib and Tony Seba (my third time interviewing Tony) for The Long Game, I knew it would be a fascinating ride. It turned out to be one of the most sweeping, mind-expanding conversations I’ve had yet.

Their new book, Stellar, lays out a bold thesis: we’re not just living through tech disruption, but a full-blown civilizational phase change. The old model — based on extracting land, labor, and capital — is collapsing. In its place, we’re entering a “stellar” age: solar-powered, decentralized, AI-driven, and regenerative.

What struck me most was the systemic lens. This isn’t just about energy or AI — it’s about building societies that thrive without needing to burn through finite resources. From governance to business models, Seba and Arbib argue we need to rethink it all. Whether or not you buy the full vision, Stellar offers one of the most provocative frameworks I’ve seen for what comes next.

Key quote: “Tony Seba: Extraction shaped our minds. We evolved to think linearly, mechanistically, because that’s what extraction rewarded. But now, holistic, systems thinking becomes valuable. Even our social sciences — economics, psychology, sociology — they were developed for humans in extraction. That’s why they so often fail us now. James Arbib: And there are signs of change. Consciousness movements, biohacking, decentralized communities — they’re all pieces of this transition. But we still lack a unifying vision that ties them together.”

The case for knowing how things are made

In his thoughtful essay on material intelligence, the curator and writer Glenn Adamson explores the widening gap between consumers — and the things they consume.

For example, most people today (myself included) can’t tell you where their chair was made, what it’s made from, or who made it. This ignorance isn’t accidental, per se. It’s simply the byproduct of globalized supply chains and hyper-specialization.

Adamson, in his essay, argues that this detachment from the material world comes at a cost: it erodes our sense of responsibility, ethics — and even creativity. To me, the takeaway is important. Understanding how things are made — whether a product, a service, or a system — isn’t just nostalgic craft talk. It’s strategy. It sharpens judgment and helps teams build with care.

As automation expands and decision-making becomes more abstract (see here for our deep-dive on Amazon automation), the companies that thrive over the long-term may actually be the ones that remain grounded in the physical realities of their work.

Key quote: “Until about a century ago, most people knew a great deal about their immediate material world. Fewer and fewer do today, as commodities circulate with ever greater speed over greater distances. Because of the sheer complexity of contemporary production, even the people who do have professional responsibility for making things — the engineers and factory workers and chemists among us — tend to be specialists. Deepened knowledge usually also means narrowed knowledge. This tends to obscure awareness of the extended production chains through which materials, tools, components and packaging are sourced. Nobody — not an assembly-line worker, not a CEO — has a comprehensive vantage point. It is partly a problem of scale: the wider the view comes, the harder it is to see clearly what’s close at hand.”

Maybe maintenance is more important than innovation

Here’s a provocative idea: innovation isn’t the most important heuristic in business. Care is.

My friend Paul Higgins wrote a brilliant piece recently called The Maintenance Premium, and it challenges one of the deepest assumptions in modern business: that value comes primarily from launching new things. What if that’s wrong? What if real value — the kind that compounds over decades — comes not from disruption, but from thoughtful maintenance?

Drawing on insights from Stewart Brand, Robert Pirsig, and Christopher Alexander, Paul makes the case that companies that care — about their products, their people, their systems — build quieter, more durable forms of advantage. The German Mittelstand [small and medium-sized businesses], Japanese craft retailers, long-lived family firms — these aren’t the loudest players, but they’re often the last ones standing. It’s a must-read for anyone rethinking what actually drives endurance.

Key quote: “Robert Pirsig, in his philosophical exploration Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, revealed a deeper truth about maintenance that most business thinkers miss. Maintenance isn’t static preservation but dynamic engagement. When you truly maintain a motorcycle, you’re not just keeping it running. You’re developing an intimate understanding of how it wants to run, constantly making micro-adjustments that improve its performance. The machine and the maintainer evolve together. This same principle, Pirsig argued, applies to any system we care for, from motorcycles to enterprises.”

OUTLAST field notes: John Candeto on power laws

Here’s the big idea from my recent conversation with John Candeto, which will be out in Big Think soon: power laws quietly run the universe.

John — writer and the investor behind The Phronesis Fund — is on a quest to study the nature of power laws (and how power laws drive nature). The basic gist is this: a few moments, people, relationships, or decisions end up mattering way more than the rest. It’s not just in wealth or fame: It’s in who you marry, which ideas you pursue, even which room in your house you spend the most time in.

As John researches, he’s seeing how power laws show up everywhere. And so if you want to build something that lasts, you have to learn to see them — and harness them to your advantage.

John’s advice? First, survive — because nothing compounds if you’re wiped out early. Second, dream bigger — because small things, given time and care, can turn into monsters (in a good way). And finally, treat the high-potential stuff in your life like gold. Whether it’s an idea, a person, or a project — if it’s got power law potential, give it your full attention. That’s the game. Outlasting isn’t about doing everything right. It’s about doing the right things long enough.

A few more links I enjoyed:

What If Money Expired? via Noema

Key quote: “‍Today, there is about $2.34 trillion of physical U.S. currency in circulation, and as much as half of it is held abroad. That accounts for just 10% of the country’s gross domestic product (the total monetary value of all the goods and services produced). Total U.S. bank deposits are around $17 trillion. Meanwhile, total wealth in this country, including non-monetary assets, is around $149 trillion, more than 63 times the total available cash. The gaps between these numbers are like dark matter in the universe — we don’t have a way to empirically account for it, and yet without it our understanding of the universe, or the economy, would collapse.”

How vulnerable is the world? – via Nick Bostrom and Matthew van der Merwe

Key quote: “‍One way of looking at human creativity is as a process of pulling balls out of a giant urn. The balls represent ideas, discoveries and inventions. Over the course of history, we have extracted many balls. Most have been beneficial to humanity. The rest have been various shades of grey: a mix of good and bad, whose net effect is difficult to estimate.”