It’s time to connect a few dots. On the surface, the recent social upheavals seem to be about a lack of fairness and a loss of jobs and opportunities, while the actions of the central banks and various governments seem to be about trying to find the right combination of policy tweaks and adjustments to get things back on track.
None of these things can really make sense if we stay on the surface.
By traveling down to the layer where we can see the connection between energy and the economy, all of these actions suddenly make a lot more sense. If an economy is the sum of all goods and services, and every single one of those is dependent on energy, then having more surplus energy rather than less will produce a larger economy with more surplus that can be divvied up among a given population.
Conversely, less energy, whether we opt to measure that in terms of net energy or the cost of energy (itself just a marker for net energy, when we bother to scratch at the idea a bit), means less economic abundance that can be shared.
Yes, there are important issues of social justice and fairness to be brought to light and examined, but our prediction would be that these really only have the chance to surface once the pie has noticeably shrunk, and there’s not quite enough to go around anymore.
by cmartenson 
