Catastrophe is bad for the Left, say these communists, so there’s at least something to look at there. They don’t make the connection to r/K politicial dynamics, but that’s probably linkage worth making. The #HRx criticism that capitalism goes off the rails by making people fat and happy has something to it as well. There’s a tragic structure there, which can get lost behind the obesity statistics. Capitalism works best as a general problem-solving protocol for tackling harsh reality.

Capitalism is, in any case, a positive catastrophe in the technical (Thom) sense.

The XS meta-political-economic proposal is capital autonomization, based on massive capital goods absorption of social surplus, in order to keep the monkeys sharp and hungry. It’s not an easy thing to pull-off politically, which is why exotic solutions of the Neocameral-type are so attractive. Constant Malthusian catastrophe requires a lot of upkeep, but there are a number of ways to get there. Crypto-cybernetic capital (at last) in power is one, but social / ecological collapse gets there by a negative route. The extreme challenge of the off-planet frontier (stripped of abundance delusions) would help to put it onto automatic.