AI’s Energy Paradox: Fueling Dystopia or Empowering a Post-MMO World?

The Real Energy Sink - Advertising, Marketing and Commerce

Banksy's "The Joy of Not Being Sold Anything"

Beyond the Belly of the Beast

Everything discussed in this essay will appear radical from within-the-system of our current socio-political-economic paradigm, but entirely practical—and transformative—when viewed outside of TINA, an acronym that stands for “There Is No Alternative”. Under our current system, AI is alarming—jobs disappearing, technofeudalism rising, and fascism looming paint a dystopian future. Compounding these concerns is the massive energy consumption of AI, particularly in training and operating large-scale models, which strains global resources and exacerbates climate change. But stepping outside this myopic lens reveals hopeful possibilities. Realizing them requires a shift in consciousness, a “radically practical” perspective on human organization, and openness to a future socio-economic system unlike anything ever seen in the history of humanity. To avoid extinction, we must dare to imagine—and build—a world beyond money, markets, and ownership (MMO).

As a former third-party seller on Amazon, selling mass-produced products manufactured in China, I have been in the belly of the beast. I have seen firsthand the overproduction, waste, and energy consumption inherent in eCommerce and commerce in general. The system is designed to prioritize profit over sustainability, and it thrives on creating artificial demand for products that are often unnecessary or disposable. Millions are spent on pay-per-click ads, targeting algorithms, and psychological pricing to convince consumers they need things they don’t—fueling a cycle of overconsumption and waste.

The problem is that we don’t see the paradigm of commerce and MMO for what it is—it’s like the air we breathe or the water a fish swims in. It’s so pervasive, so normalized, that we rarely question its existence or consider alternatives. But just because we can’t see it doesn’t mean it isn’t shaping our lives—and our planet—in destructive ways.

Mother Nature doesn’t care if the ideas about post-MMO seem utopian or unrealistic. We either align with Gaia and natural laws or we go extinct. How we get there is another matter. But I can tell you one thing: we must open our consciousness to radically different possibilities because it is utopian to think we can keep going the way we are.

The Real Energy Culprit: Commerce, Markets, and Ownership

Commerce itself—rooted in markets, trade, and monetary exchange—is the real energy culprit. The advertising and marketing industries, integral to commerce, exist not to equitably meet human needs but to generate artificial demand, fueling impulse buying while consuming vast resources. Unlike AI, which can optimize processes and reduce waste, commerce in its current form prioritizes maximizing sales over necessity, driving a cycle of overproduction and waste. At its core, commerce is built on a myth of the given—the belief that money, markets, and ownership (MMO) are inevitable features of civilization. Ownership, in particular, necessitates commerce: the idea that everyone must own a copy of something requires endless production, distribution, and monetary exchange, all of which consume energy and resources. This belief, reinforced by TINA (“There Is No Alternative”), frames capitalism as the only viable system. In reality, MMO are social constructs, not fundamental truths. They separate us from the resources, cooperation, and natural abundance that sustain life.

This essay explores how commerce fuels massive energy waste and examines how AI, if used regeneratively, could help transition humanity to a post-scarcity paradigm beyond MMO.

Digital and Traditional Advertising Infrastructure

Online advertising relies on massive data centers for real-time bidding, user tracking, and targeted ads. The global programmatic advertising industry consumes enormous energy, with ad exchanges and AI-driven algorithms optimizing targeting across millions of devices. A single ad impression involves dozens of servers communicating in milliseconds, a process repeated billions of times daily.

Video ads, autoplaying on social media and streaming platforms, significantly increase data transmission and server load. A 30-second ad, multiplied by millions of views, has a staggering energy cost. High-definition and 4K ads exacerbate this burden.

Traditional advertising is equally wasteful. Billboards, print ads, and TV commercials require energy-intensive production, from paper and ink manufacturing to broadcast equipment. In industries like pharmaceuticals, companies often allocate more funds to marketing and executive salaries than to research and development, highlighting a system that prioritizes profit over innovation and public health.

Retail Stores and Shopping Malls as Energy Hubs

Brick-and-mortar retail is one of the largest energy-consuming industries, with lighting, heating, air conditioning, and warehouse networks. Shopping malls, designed to encourage impulse buying, often operate at a fraction of capacity, wasting energy on maintaining unnecessary spaces.

eCommerce exacerbates the problem. Online retail relies on sprawling warehouses, expedited shipping, and constant stock rotations, increasing energy use and carbon emissions. Next-day or same-day delivery, while convenient, comes at a significant environmental cost.

The Psychology of Manufactured Demand and Impulse Buying

Marketing creates false needs, convincing people they need the latest fashion, gadgets, or seasonal décor. Retailers use AI to optimize impulse purchases, such as suggested items, time-limited deals, and psychological pricing. Amazon’s recommendation algorithms, for example, keep users browsing and buying, often leading to unnecessary purchases. Fast fashion brands like Shein and Zara use data analytics to produce trends at breakneck speed, encouraging overconsumption.

Even “charm pricing”—pricing items at $9.99 instead of $10—exploits human psychology, tricking consumers into perceiving products as cheaper. This manipulation is a microcosm of the broader deception embedded in commerce itself, fueling overconsumption and waste.

The Energy Cost of Overproduction and Retail Waste

Manufactured demand and overproduction result in immense waste, both in physical stores and online retail.

1. Overproduction of Short-Lived Consumer Goods

Companies mass-produce goods based on fleeting trends, not long-term utility. Because of quantity discounts and economies of scale, it’s cheaper to manufacture larger quantities, even if demand is uncertain. The marketing cycle creates artificial urgency, leading consumers to buy disposable products. Fast fashion, seasonal items, and tech gadgets exemplify this waste. For instance, smartphones are replaced every two years, not because they stop functioning but because newer models are marketed as must-haves, generating enormous electronic waste.

2. Retail Logistics and Transportation Waste

Expedited shipping increases carbon emissions, as companies prioritize speed over efficiency. Constant stock rotations and long-distance transportation further strain resources, contributing to the system’s inefficiency.

3. Unsold Merchandise and Disposal of Retail Waste

Unsold inventory is frequently discarded, with many retailers destroying unsold clothing rather than donating it to protect brand image and maintain artificial scarcity. Liquidation, incineration, and landfill disposal are common fates for unsold products. Amazon, for example, has faced criticism for destroying millions of unsold items, including electronics and clothing, in its warehouses.

4. The Hidden Costs of eCommerce Returns

Online shopping has led to a surge in returns, with customers often buying multiple items intending to return some. Returned items, if opened or used, are often liquidated, incinerated, or landfilled. Even resold items double transportation-related emissions. According to Tobin Moore, CEO of Optoro, returns generate nearly 6 billion pounds of landfill waste and 16 million metric tons of CO2 annually—equivalent to the waste of 3.3 million Americans (January 28, 2022).

The Absurdity of Selling the Invisible: Insurance Advertising

The insurance industry spends billions advertising a purely financial product. Unlike physical goods, insurance is a socially constructed financial instrument that has no tangible reality. Companies like Progressive, Geico, and Allstate spend more on advertising than many companies do on production of real physical products. Some Progressive ads even depict insurance as a physical product, sold in boxes on a retail store shelf, highlighting the absurdity of selling intangibles. In a post-MMO world, insurance might not exist at all, as there will be no need for financial constructs entirely abstracted and detached from the realities of human and ecological well-being.

Jevon’s Paradox and AI’s “Efficiency Gains”

Jevon’s Paradox states that as technology improves efficiency, overall consumption increases. AI, often promoted as a sustainability tool, exemplifies this. For instance, AI-driven logistics improvements may reduce energy use per unit but enable companies to expand operations, increasing overall consumption. Without a shift from the MMO paradigm, AI’s efficiency gains will accelerate overconsumption, not reduce it.

AI’s Role in Advertising: Energy Wasted on Manipulation

AI drives modern advertising, consuming vast energy and significant amounts of water for cooling, to optimize sales rather than solve meaningful problems. In 2024, global revenues from AI marketing applications are projected to reach $36 billion (Statista). While 32% of marketing organizations have fully implemented AI, 43% are experimenting with it (MarTech). AI’s energy use is not inherently wasteful—it’s wasted on selling unnecessary products.

In the 1960s, Don Draper and his Mad Men colleagues used charm, wit, and human intuition to convince people that smoking cigarettes was not just acceptable but glamorous. Today, AI does the same thing—only faster, cheaper, and at a scale Don Draper could only dream of. Instead of selling cigarettes, it’s selling fast fashion, gadgets, and subscription services you’ll never use. The tools have changed, but the game remains the same: manipulate, convince, and sell—no matter the cost to people or the planet.

AI’s Energy Use in Context: A Tool for a Post-MMO Future

The real absurdity is that we rarely question the necessity of these man-made social constructs—money, ownership, and commerce—or the immense and very real waste of energy, water, and resources they generate. We eagerly jump on the “AI = Bad” bandwagon without pausing to consider the destructive and degenerative foundation of our entire economic system.

AI isn’t wasteful—it’s misused. If repurposed for coordination rather than manipulation, AI could help dismantle MMO constraints, enabling a post-scarcity world. Instead of sustaining capitalism’s waste, AI could support education, resource allocation, and eliminating unnecessary jobs (assuming a citizen dividend or universal basic income-UBI) and products.

Conclusion: A Fork in the Road for Humanity.

I am not a fan of Elon Musk. I think he is a sociopathic twit who might want to watch out for pitchforks, but his 'Fork in the Road' metaphor hits uncomfortably close to home. Originally wielded to push mass resignations at Twitter and federal agencies, it mirrors humanity’s own existential crossroads. One path continues our destructive, rivalrous system of wage slavery, overconsumption, and waste within our degenerative MMO paradigm—a system where even the made-up fiction of Bitcoin mining and cryptocurrency exchanges devours staggering amounts of energy and water. The other leads to a post-MMO world, where resources are shared, human needs are met for everyone—without exception—and technology serves humanity rather than exploiting it.

AI is an accelerant—it amplifies the dynamics of whatever system it is applied to. In our current MMO world, AI accelerates the degenerative dynamics of capitalism: artificial scarcity, waste, and cyclical consumption of resources, all driven by an outdated labor-for-income model. But under post-MMO regenerative dynamics, AI could radically reduce waste, optimize resource use, and eliminate the need for bullshit jobs. Instead of selling us products we don’t need, AI could flip to a post-scarcity model, using energy to educate, raise consciousness, and enhance sense-making. Imagine the joy of not being sold anything, as Banksy’s billboard art poignantly declares—a world free from “annoyance capitalism” and the constant barrage of ads and marketing, where human creativity and cooperation flourish.

Transitioning to a post-MMO world is not utopian—it’s practical. Mother Nature operates on principles of balance and regeneration. We either align with these principles or face extinction. The first step is rejecting TINA—the myth that capitalism or communism are the only options. Groups worldwide are exploring post-MMO alternatives, like an Open-access economy (OAE) or Resource-based economy (RBE) or Integral Parallel Economy (IPE), which envision resource-sharing and technology serving human and ecological needs.

AI, if redirected, could play a pivotal role in this transition. The question is not whether we can build a better system, but whether we have the courage to try. The fork in the road is before us. The choice is ours.

Out beyond ideas of capitalism and communism, there is a field. I’ll meet you there—in my serialized speculative fiction project Parable of the Rosebush: rEvolution Z. Join me as we explore the transition into the Geotribal age and a paradigm beyond money, markets, and ownership—a world where humanity thrives in harmony with Gaia. This revolution begins in our hearts and minds and imagination. Will you take the first step?