Exactly the interaction of the feedback loops shows that they almost always work to prevent things from getting better.

A simple example a person drives a Hummer but makes the decision that if Gasoline costs more than five dollars a gallon they will switch to a more economical car. Several people decide that as gasoline goes over four dollars a gallon the will switch to a more economical car. Since the second group acts first it delays the time when the first person driving a Hummer engages in conservation simply because he had a higher pain threshold.

Somehow these sorts of contradictions seem to be related to a sort of maximum power principal in the sense that the underlying problem is that all parties wish to maximize their lifestyles almost always by increasing consumption or delaying a decrease. No one wants to be the first to change and everyone is willing to take advantage of the first people to change. A re-balancing or shift in the consumption invariably does not change the overall consumption since the entire system remains at maximum power. The export land vs king model is a perfect example.

As long as we fail to recognize that without serious intervention the natural result is that the collective system operates at maximum power we will be unable to really make changes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energetics

In my opinion what we call wealth and lifestyles or a good life almost always is directly related to a energy quality measure of some form. As long as we desire energy quality transformations we are stuck
in a maximum power rut if you will.

Its interesting that some of our greatest works music, books and computers are objects that break this direct relationship between energy and desirability. Art in all its forms seems to be the only way out.
However we often debase arts such as a beautiful dress design by coupling it with mass production which links the beauty of art with the material needs of a mass produced quality transformation.

This shows that mass production itself is far more dangerous then we realize since it devalues a work of art and causes it to be translated into a replicative maximum power problem.

Certainly at some levels it makes sense to mass produce common objects but our society has no concept of the need to balance the ability of art to satiate our desire for a good life with its ability if kept within reason to limit and treasure the material manifestations of art by not mass producing it.

A great example is fine china tableware which has lost all value via mass production. It used to be hand painted and crafted art. Not anymore.

The situation in Nigeria is quite a bit more complicated than either of you seem to imply. While circuits of social and economic regress are most certainly tied to the (lack of) distribution of oil wealth, these circuits of regress can be traced back to years of colonial rule, divide and conquer techniques of social control, and years of dictatorial rule which further divided the land and its people. There is also a federal police system, the ethnic composition of which is far from representative of the Nigerian population, and over(t)ly aggressive police responses to relatively minor protests have further entrenched ethnic divisions and incited ethnic violence. But getting back to the question of oil and the distribution of oil wealth... Even IF a 'fair' distribution was to exist, there is the simple fact that oil production and all that comes with it (flaring of gases, the laying of pipelines through delicate wetlands, leaks both small and large - both unintentional and intentional) have destroyed more traditional ways of life, like fishing and agriculture. Significant populations have been displaced so that production facilities can be located in an optimal site. These are the types of disruptions that an 'equitable' dispersion of oil wealth simply cannot overcome. My simple point is that any solution in Nigeria must be more comprehensive than an enforcement of the distribution of wealth. For a solution to be viable it must break all of the circuits of regress, not simply those related to the distribution of oil revenue. I could go on and on about this topic, but fear that "the length of this document will guard it well against the risk of being read" (Winston Churchill). I encourage anyone interested in learning more about these feedback loops to email me directly at dohne[at]u.washington.edu