A Red Delicious does not gaze wistfully at a Honeycrisp and mutter, “One day, I too shall be admired by suburban shoppers in upscale supermarkets.” Apples lack both self-awareness and a subscription to fruit industry newsletters.

Celebrity is a social phenomenon that requires:

1. Recognition by others.
2. Awareness (or at least potential awareness) of that recognition.
3. A lot of unnecessary attention.

Humans satisfy all three and then spend centuries developing anxiety about it.

Apples only satisfy the first, and only from our perspective. To the apple, if it has a perspective at all—which seems unlikely, though I admit I have not interviewed one—there is no distinction between being the most beloved apple in the Northern Hemisphere and being squirrel food behind a shed.

So yes: Honeycrisp is “famous” only in the same way that Moby-Dick is important to people who have read it. Fame exists in the minds of the observers, not in the observed.

The apple itself remains gloriously indifferent, free from vanity, scandal, and the burden of maintaining a personal brand. It does not care whether humans adore it or turn it into applesauce. In this respect, the apple is wiser than most of us. Which is a bit humbling.

GPT

The best available estimates suggest that the average billionaire’s annual carbon footprint is on the order of 6,000–8,000 tonnes of CO₂ equivalent (tCO₂e) from lifestyle and consumption alone, and can be vastly higher when investment emissions are included.

A practical estimate

According to research cited by Oxfam International and the Stockholm Environment Institute, a study of 20 billionaires found they emitted an average of 8,194 tCO₂e per year, roughly 5,959 tonnes of CO₂ after conversion.

If investment emissions are included

This is where the numbers become staggering.

Oxfam estimated that the investments of 125 billionaires were responsible for 393 million tonnes CO₂e annually, averaging over 3 million tonnes per billionaire per year.

That is equivalent to the annual emissions of:

• Hundreds of thousands of cars, or
• A small country

These emissions are “attributed” to them because they own large shares in fossil fuel, mining, aviation, and other high-emitting industries.

Bottom line

A reasonable estimate for the average billionaire’s direct ecological/carbon footprint is:

~6,000–8,000 tonnes CO₂e per year

Including emissions linked to investments:

Hundreds of thousands to several million tonnes CO₂e per year

Relative to an average person:

1,000 to 1,500+ times larger, and sometimes much more.

So if by “ecological footprint” you mean overall environmental impact, the average billionaire’s footprint is not just larger—it is often comparable to that of a small town or even a small country.

A person experiencing homelessness typically has an extremely small ecological footprint compared with the average resident of a high-income country.

Estimated annual carbon footprint

There is no widely cited study that calculates a single “average homeless person” footprint, but a reasonable estimate for someone with very low consumption in a country like the UK or US is:

0.5 to 2 tonnes CO₂e per year

 

Comparing to billionaires

Using the estimates above:

• Homeless person: ~0.5–2 tCO₂e/year
• Billionaire (lifestyle only): ~6,000–8,000 tCO₂e/year

That means a billionaire may emit roughly:

3,000 to 16,000 times more carbon per year

If investment-related emissions are included, the disparity can reach into the millions-fold.

Bottom line

A reasonable estimate for the average homeless person’s ecological footprint is:

Around 0.5 to 2 tonnes CO₂e per year, likely among the lowest footprints in wealthy countries.

Their environmental impact is tiny compared with both average citizens and especially the ultra-wealthy.

Why do we reward the most ecocidal sets of individuals and punish individuals who are not contributing to ecocide?

Because modern societies often reward ownership and capital accumulation, not necessarily social or ecological contribution.

In most market economies, the people who gain the most wealth are those who control assets—companies, land, intellectual property, financial instruments—not those whose lifestyles are environmentally modest or whose work provides the greatest public benefit.

Why high-impact individuals are rewarded

1. Economic systems reward profit, not sustainability

If an activity generates large profits, it tends to attract investment and social status even if it imposes environmental costs.

Examples include:

• Fossil fuel extraction
• Luxury aviation
• Mining
• Industrial agriculture
• High-consumption consumer goods

Many environmental harms are treated as externalities—costs borne by society rather than by the people who profit.

2. Wealth compounds

Money generates more money through:

• Dividends
• Capital gains
• Interest
• Ownership stakes

Once someone reaches billionaire status, returns on capital can far exceed any personal labor contribution.

3. Political influence

Very wealthy individuals and corporations often have disproportionate influence through:

• Lobbying
• Campaign financing
• Media ownership
• Think tanks

This can slow policies that would internalize environmental costs.

4. Social prestige is linked to wealth

Many cultures equate wealth with success, intelligence, and merit, regardless of ecological consequences.

Why low-impact individuals are often punished

People with low ecological footprints may consume little because they have limited resources, not because society rewards restraint.

Examples include:

• People experiencing homelessness
• Low-income households
• Subsistence communities

Despite their small environmental impact, they may face:

• Social stigma
• Economic insecurity
• Limited political power

Structural mismatch

The core issue is that incentives are misaligned:

What benefits society/ecology	What markets often reward
Low resource use	High consumption
Long-term stewardship	Short-term returns
Shared prosperity	Concentrated ownership
Pollution reduction	Externalized costs

Why this persists

• Existing institutions were built around growth and industrial expansion.
• Environmental costs are diffuse and delayed.
• Beneficiaries of the current system have strong incentives to preserve it.
• Those harmed often have less power.

Historical perspective

Many societies have rewarded those who control scarce resources rather than those who minimize harm. Today’s ecological crisis reflects that longstanding pattern operating at planetary scale.

Is this changing?

There is growing pressure for:

• Carbon pricing
• Wealth taxes
• Stronger environmental regulation
• ESG and stewardship standards
• Alternative economic models such as doughnut economics and degrowth

Progress exists, but current incentives still largely favor accumulation.

Bottom line

Society often rewards people whose activities cause the greatest environmental harm because economic systems prioritize profit, ownership, and influence rather than ecological stewardship.

Those with the smallest footprints are frequently economically marginalized because markets do not compensate people for consuming less.

So the paradox is:

The individuals who place the greatest burden on the planet are often rewarded most, while those who impose the least burden are often punished most severely.

 Living lightly on the Earth is a public good. Public goods should be rewarded with the greatest security, dignity, and respect.

 Neuroscience has updated the "learned helplessness" theory, showing that passivity is not learned, but rather a hardwired, default biological response to inescapable adversity. Modern research reveals the brain naturally defaults to a "freeze" state, and it is actually control that is learned. 

Evil controls resources and so if you want to survive then you have to do evils bidding, you are rewarded for merging with evil. In that sense, "evil" doesn't just control the resources; it becomes you. To thrive, one must align with whoever holds the keys to the pantry. Systems of meaning, power, achievement, nation, religion, ideology, wealth, status, etc. help people deny mortality and feel valuable. But because these symbolic systems are fragile, humans become willing to commit cruelty, domination, sacrifice, and violence to defend them.

In Ernest Becker’s view, evil is not just individual sadism, it becomes embedded in social systems and everyday life. People merge themselves psychologically with power structures because those structures provide security, identity, and symbolic immortality. Survival and reward become tied to participation in “evil.” Societies often reward the very traits that help maintain collective illusions: obedience, ambition, aggression, conformity to dominant systems, willingness to sacrifice others for the “hero system.” And because people derive identity from those systems, they stop seeing the violence clearly. In that sense, the system “becomes you,” not only externally but internally — shaping desires, morality, and selfhood. Civilizations are built on repression and sacrifice.

• Control of resources — If access to money, safety, status, food, jobs, or social belonging is concentrated, people adapt themselves to whatever maintains access.
• Moral adaptation — Humans are highly adaptive. Repeated compromise can gradually stop feeling like compromise.
• Identity fusion — Over time, systems don’t just coerce behavior; they shape desires, language, ambitions, and self-image. That’s the “evil becomes you” part.

A lot of thinkers have explored this from different angles:

• Hannah Arendt argued that harmful systems are often sustained not by cartoon villains, but by ordinary people adapting to bureaucratic incentives.
• Karl Marx described how economic structures can shape consciousness itself.
• Friedrich Nietzsche warned that struggling with monsters can transform the struggler.
• Many religious traditions frame worldly power as spiritually corrupting when survival becomes tied to domination, greed, or fear.

 Humans evolved in small, socially embedded groups for most of our history. Shared meals, rhythmic routines, face-to-face interaction, storytelling, cooperative work, and time spent outdoors likely provided repeated signals of safety and belonging to the nervous system. Sitting around a fire together is a good symbolic example because it combines several calming inputs at once:

• warmth
• predictable social contact
• synchronized activity (eating, talking, resting)
• darkness/light rhythms aligned with nature
• reduced cognitive overload
• low social scale (you knew everyone present)

These kinds of conditions are associated with activation of the parasympathetic nervous system — what people casually call “rest and digest.”

Modern environments often push in the opposite direction:

• chronic time pressure
• fragmented attention
• social comparison at massive scale
• artificial light and disrupted sleep
• economic precarity
• reduced community cohesion
• constant evaluation and surveillance
• emotionally performative workplaces and online spaces

The “wearing masks” idea also maps onto established psychological concepts. In sociology, Sociology and psychology, researchers talk about:

• emotional labor
• impression management
• self-monitoring
• alienation
• role strain

For example, Erving Goffman described social life as somewhat theatrical — people managing presentations of self depending on context. That doesn’t mean all social behavior is fake, but modern institutions can intensify this performance pressure.

There’s also research suggesting that humans regulate stress through co-regulation with others. Being physically near trusted people, sharing meals, touch, eye contact, laughter, and synchronized behavior can measurably affect stress physiology. Isolation and atomization can remove those buffers.

At the same time, it’s important not to romanticize premodern life too much. 

So the strongest version of the argument is probably not:

“Ancient life was mentally healthy and modern life is pathological.”

but rather:

Human nervous systems evolved for conditions that differ significantly from many features of contemporary industrial and digital life.

That mismatch hypothesis is taken seriously across areas like:

• Evolutionary Psychology
• Psychiatry
• Neuroscience
• Anthropology

Many psychologists, philosophers, and sociologists would agree there can be strain not only from performing a role yourself, but from existing in environments where you constantly encounter people who seem guarded, strategic, curated, or emotionally inauthentic.

Humans appear highly attuned to authenticity cues. We are continuously — often unconsciously — evaluating:

• whether someone means what they say
• whether emotional expressions are genuine
• whether there is hidden status competition
• whether interaction is safe or manipulative
• whether a person’s outer presentation matches inner state

When there’s a persistent mismatch, interactions can become cognitively and emotionally taxing. You may feel:

• vigilance
• distrust
• emotional exhaustion
• alienation
• derealization or social unreality
• loneliness even while surrounded by people

This idea overlaps with several concepts:

• Social Psychology research on self-presentation and impression management
• Existentialism discussions of authenticity and bad faith
• Phenomenology analyses of interpersonal presence
• Attachment Theory and emotional attunement
• Organizational Psychology work on emotional labor and burnout

The nervous system dimension is important too. Social interaction is not merely “information exchange”; it is also biological regulation. Humans often relax around people who feel congruent, predictable, and emotionally coherent. Conversely, ambiguous or performative social environments can keep people in low-grade threat monitoring.

For example:

• highly corporate speech
• excessive branding of the self
• status signaling
• transactional networking
• forced positivity
• algorithmically curated identities online

can produce a feeling that one is interacting with surfaces rather than persons.

 Often people are adapting to incentive structures:

• workplaces reward strategic self-presentation
• social media rewards curation
• precarious economies reward reputation management
• large societies require interacting with strangers rather than deeply known community members

So “masking” can be adaptive while still being psychologically costly — both for the wearer and for those around them.

Some thinkers have argued that modernity creates conditions of chronic social abstraction: people become functions, brands, résumés, avatars, or professional identities rather than fully embodied persons embedded in stable communal life.

That said, complete unfiltered authenticity is not always desirable either. Civilization depends partly on tact, restraint, and role behavior. Some “masks” are prosocial:

• politeness
• professionalism
• emotional self-regulation
• respecting boundaries

The difficulty arises when the performative layer becomes so dominant that genuine spontaneity, vulnerability, and mutual recognition become rare. Many people seem to experience that as emotionally depleting, even if they cannot fully articulate why.

 A useful way to approach this is to notice frameworks rather than labels. “Neoliberal” is used loosely online, but in political and economic discussions it often refers to habits of thought that prioritize markets, competition, privatization, individual responsibility, efficiency, and technocratic management.

If you want to catch yourself thinking in that mode, the goal isn’t to shame yourself — it’s to become aware of assumptions you may be making automatically.

Some common signals:

• Reducing social problems to individual choices
  Example:
  • “People are poor because they made bad decisions.”
    Instead of also asking:
  • What structural conditions shaped those decisions?
  • What options were realistically available?

• Assuming market outcomes are naturally fair or optimal
  Thoughts like:

  • “If people value it, the market will provide it.”
  • “Competition always improves things.”

  Try asking:

  • Who has bargaining power here?
  • What externalities or inequalities are hidden?
  • What happens to people who can’t effectively participate in the market?

• Treating efficiency as the highest value
  Neoliberal reasoning often elevates:

  • optimization
  • productivity
  • measurable outputs

  over:

  • dignity
  • stability
  • community
  • democratic participation

  A good self-check:

  • “Efficient for whom?”
  • “What human costs are being ignored because they’re hard to quantify?”

• Framing everything as personal branding or self-investment
  For example:

  • friendships as networking
  • hobbies as side hustles
  • education purely as ROI
  • self-worth tied to productivity

  Catch moments where you stop valuing things intrinsically.

• Assuming private solutions are automatically superior to public ones
  You might notice reflexive skepticism toward:

  • unions
  • regulation
  • public services
  • collective ownership

  without first examining evidence case by case.

• Thinking of citizens primarily as consumers
  A neoliberal frame often asks:

  • “What choices do individuals have?”

  rather than:

  • “What power do people collectively have?”
  • “Who sets the rules?”

One practical exercise:
When you have a strong opinion about an economic or social issue, ask yourself three alternative questions:

1. What would a socialist critique of my view be?
2. What would a conservative critique be?
3. What assumptions about human nature or society am I taking for granted?

You don’t have to agree with the critiques — the point is widening your lens.

Also, be careful not to turn this into ideological self-policing. Most people draw from multiple political traditions simultaneously. You can support markets in some areas and collective solutions in others without needing a total identity label.

 Ellen Meiksins Wood’s Democracy Against Capitalism is a Marxist political theory book arguing that modern capitalism is fundamentally at odds with real democracy, even in countries that call themselves democratic.

Here’s a clear synopsis of her main argument.

---

Core thesis

Wood’s central claim is:

Capitalism and democracy are structurally in tension, because capitalism limits democratic control over economic life.

She argues that what we usually call “liberal democracy” is actually a political system that coexists with capitalism but does not control it.

---

1. What “democracy” originally meant (for Wood)

Wood starts by distinguishing:

• Ancient democracy (e.g. Athens): direct political participation by citizens
• Modern democracy: representative government, but limited to political sphere only

She argues that modern democracy is already a reduction of democracy because it excludes economic life from democratic control.

---

2. The key idea: capitalism separates “economic” from “political”

This is her most important analytical move.

In capitalism:

• The economy is governed by market relations and private property
• The state governs political rights and law
• But the state does not directly control production or distribution

So even if citizens vote, they do not collectively control economic life, which is where most power actually sits.

---

3. Why this matters for democracy

Wood argues that:

• Real power in capitalism lies in control over production, investment, and labour
• Those decisions are made by private owners and firms, not democratic institutions
• This means political equality (one person, one vote) coexists with economic inequality and hierarchy

So democracy becomes:

“political equality within a system of economic inequality”

---

4. Capitalism reshapes “freedom” and “choice”

She also argues that capitalism reframes coercion:

• Workers are “free” in a legal sense
• But must sell labour to survive
• So economic necessity replaces overt coercion

This creates what she sees as a formal but limited freedom.

---

5. Critique of liberalism

Wood criticises liberal political theory for:

• Treating democracy as purely political (elections, rights, institutions)
• Ignoring economic power structures
• Assuming markets are separate from political power

She argues this separation hides how capitalism shapes real life chances.

---

6. Her conclusion

Wood’s overall conclusion is strong:

• You cannot fully realise democracy without transforming capitalism
• Expanding democracy means extending it into economic life
• Otherwise democracy remains “partial” and constrained

In short:

Capitalism limits democracy to the political sphere, while keeping economic power largely undemocratic.

---

Big picture takeaway

The book is less about specific policies and more about a structural claim:

• Liberal democracy = political rights + capitalist economy
• But economic power dominates political equality
• Therefore, “democracy against capitalism” means democracy would eventually have to challenge capitalist ownership and control itself

---

If you want, I can also explain how Wood’s argument compares to mainstream social democracy (like Nordic models) or to thinkers who disagree with her, because that’s where the debate gets really interesting.

if economic power dominates political rights/equality why does it follow that capitalist ownership and control has to be challenged to the degree and in the way that Meiksins suggests, why not just say that rights or equality need to be established and economic domination needs to end, as in sphere sovereignty for example?

That’s a very good objection, and it gets right to the heart of the debate around Ellen Meiksins Wood.

What you’re pointing out is essentially:

Why assume economic power necessarily undermines democracy, rather than arguing for institutional limits that keep economic and political spheres distinct and balanced?

That’s close to what traditions like sphere sovereignty (associated with Abraham Kuyper) argue:

• society contains multiple legitimate spheres (state, market, church, family, civil society)
• no single sphere should dominate the others
• the problem is domination, not necessarily private ownership itself

Wood would reject that framework—not because she thinks it’s incoherent, but because she thinks capitalism makes true separation impossible.

Here’s the disagreement more precisely.

---

Your line of reasoning

Your argument is something like:

1. Economic domination is bad if it overwhelms political equality
2. But that does not logically imply abolishing or fundamentally transforming capitalism
3. Instead, one could:
   • constitutionally limit economic influence
   • strengthen democratic institutions
   • protect social rights
   • decentralize power
   • maintain plural spheres of authority

So:

The issue is excessive concentration of power, not capitalism as such.

That’s a serious position, and many non-Marxist political theorists would agree with you.

---

Why Wood thinks that’s insufficient

Wood’s argument is more structural than moral.

She would say:

• capitalism is not merely “markets” or “trade”
• it is a system where survival depends on market participation and capital accumulation
• therefore economic power is not external to politics—it continuously shapes it

In her view, even if formal rights exist:

• firms control investment
• employers control access to wages
• owners influence media, lobbying, and institutions
• governments become dependent on economic growth generated by private capital

So she thinks:

political institutions cannot remain fully autonomous from capital because the whole society depends on capital accumulation.

This is why she moves from:

• “economic domination exists”
  to
• “capitalist ownership relations themselves are the source.”

---

The key philosophical divide

The disagreement is really about whether capitalism is:

A. One sphere among others

(your implied position / sphere sovereignty style)

or

B. The underlying structure shaping all other spheres

(Wood’s position)

That’s the crux.

---

Sphere sovereignty’s response

A sphere sovereignty thinker would likely say Wood collapses all social life into economics.

They’d argue:

• markets are legitimate but limited
• the state, family, religion, universities, unions, etc. all possess independent authority
• healthy societies distribute power across institutions
• economic power can be checked without abolishing markets or private property

This view sees pluralism—not socialism—as the antidote to domination.

---

Wood’s likely counter-response

Wood would probably reply:

Under capitalism, the market is never “just another sphere,” because material survival depends on it.

For her:

• dependence on wages creates structural inequality
• owners can withhold investment
• governments must maintain “business confidence”
• therefore capital has systemic leverage even without direct political control

So she thinks liberal rights and institutional pluralism soften capitalism’s effects but do not overcome its underlying power structure.

---

Where modern social democracy fits

Interestingly, Nordic-style social democracy is partly an attempt to bridge these views.

It says:

• capitalism generates wealth efficiently
• but unchecked markets distort democracy
• therefore strong institutions, unions, welfare systems, and regulation are needed to counterbalance capital

This doesn’t abolish capitalism, but it also doesn’t trust markets to remain in their “proper sphere” automatically.

---

Bottom line

You’re identifying a genuine logical gap that critics of Wood often point out:

“Economic power influences politics” does not automatically prove that capitalism itself must be transcended.

To get from one to the other, Wood has to argue:

1. capitalist economic power is structural, not accidental
2. it cannot be permanently contained by liberal-democratic institutions
3. therefore democracy ultimately requires transforming ownership and production relations

Whether that argument succeeds depends on whether you think:

• capitalism can be constitutionally domesticated and pluralized
  or
• economic dependence inevitably makes capital dominant over time.