@"overuse of resources is a typical pattern" - I don't agree, the drive for overuse of resources may be considered as such but this is hugely species-dependent,

@"overuse of resources is a typical pattern" - I don't agree, the drive for overuse of resources may be considered as such but this is hugely species-dependent, and besides a lot of cost-to-gather-resources vs energy-you-get abstractions one can knit oneself into, the main (limiting) factor is and always has been the (ever changing) environment and a sort of equilibrium all systems within are forced to adapt to/operate in(or, extinct). Without steering even further from the thread, humanity is unable to adapt to the ultimate limiting factor as of today(one can say earths biosphere) and the cause for that is as I pointed out earlier .. at least that's what I came to realize once I dived into all that boring policy/economy more-pr-than-science. @Patent-law: stumbled-upon a freely-available book about the patent system and its evolution years ago(maybe via HN), I'm not on my PC so can't tell you what the name or authors were(from UCLA IIRC), but one gets pretty upset when reading it :) @"playing the blame game, or trying to assign causality, is frequently nonproductive and/or fraught" I Don't agree, wrapping one self's mind into a nicely-picked-set of philosophical nuances is whats unproductive. Its like going through academia without ever asking anyone for clarifications/more information on a subject because you were brought-up/"propagandized" into believing that everyone who is asking is a non-productive burden to society. Its time to point fingers even knowing you could be wrong(which should be the default anyway), at least you get some information out of that process .. @Ecology and the Politics of Scarcity - haven't read that one, but based on your last point, although I do agree that some level of coercion will be present in the society for years to come(since, its a product of "our nature") .. I don't think there is room for critique of a "decentralized system"(other than of a decentralized system made of competing centralized systems), same as there is no room to criticize democracy(once defined properly) because every other competing system was killed-off(no, Churchil was not right). Will give that book a look nevertheless(if only to get some ammunition:)