The Daily Planet #52: Metabolic Sovereignty, Part 1. Introducing Metabolic Sovereignty.

Of late, many thinkers have commented that the new cold war - and its attendant geopolitics - is not going to be ideological as much as metabolic, with competing energy stacks driving competition and conflict. In this scheme, there's a Petrostate nexus led by the US competing with an Electrostate nexus led by China.

I have a slightly different take. Metabolism needs both energy and information and as I see it, the US is doubling down on AI, so it's less of a Petrostate than it's championing the Compute Stack while China is centering the Electric Stack. Both have the capacity to incorporate the other - a compute centric power can switch out gas for electricity (of which it will need a lot!) and having tons of electricity on hand will make it easier to sustain an AI stack, especially if AI is going to be integrated deeply into hardware.

I am going to stay agnostic - for now - on the better of the two.

In any case, the metabolic wars have a compute component as well as an energetic component. What's missing in the commentary so far is the political unit that's engaging in geopolitics. I believe that's the Metabolic Sovereign, a nation (or some other unit?) that has monopoly control - or alternately, what Maturana-Varela-Luhmann would call Autopoiesis - over the energy and information that flows across its borders. Also, those borders don't have to be national borders - we don't know yet as to how the boundary of the metabolic sovereign will be drawn.

Over the next four weeks, I am going to dive deeply into the concept of Metabolic Sovereignty, with this first week devoted to abstract considerations, week 2 on Energy Sovereignty, week 3 on Compute Sovereignty and then back to Metabolic Sovereignty in week 4 where I would like to combine abstract and concrete considerations.

First up: SEP's article on Sovereignty. Might be heavy going for those not used to philosophical exposition.

Sovereignty is fundamentally defined as supreme authority within a territory, where the sovereign holds legitimate power recognized by others. Emerging in early modern Europe, sovereignty marked a shift from fragmented medieval authorities to unified states ruled by a single authority, often a monarch. This concept was shaped by thinkers like Jean Bodin and Thomas Hobbes, who emphasized sovereignty as absolute and indivisible, with the sovereign above all human laws within their domain. The Peace of Westphalia in 1648 is widely regarded as the origin of the modern sovereign state system, establishing states as the primary constitutional authorities in Europe and curtailing the Church's temporal power.

Sovereignty has three key dimensions: the identity of the sovereign (ranging from kings to peoples ruling through constitutions), the absolute or limited scope of sovereign power, and the internal versus external aspects of sovereignty. While early modern sovereignty was often absolute, contemporary states frequently share or limit sovereignty through international agreements and supranational bodies like the European Union, which constrain state authority in areas such as trade and human rights. This evolution reflects challenges to the classical notion of sovereignty, especially as global norms and institutions promote humanitarian intervention and human rights protections.

Philosophers have debated sovereignty's legitimacy and limits. Some, like Rousseau, see the people as the true sovereign, while others, such as Carl Schmitt, emphasize the sovereign's power to decide exceptions beyond constitutional law. Critics like Bertrand de Jouvenel and Jacques Maritain warn against absolute sovereignty, viewing it as potentially tyrannical and idolatrous, advocating for moral and legal constraints on sovereign power. The post-World War II era has seen significant circumscription of sovereignty, balancing state authority with international responsibilities, reflecting a dynamic and evolving understanding of sovereignty in modern political thought.

Sovereignty

Sovereignty, though its meanings have varied across history, also has a core meaning, supreme authority within a territory. It is a modern notion of political authority. Historical variants can be understood along three dimensions — the holder of sovereignty, the absoluteness of sovereignty, and the internal and external dimensions of sovereignty. The state is the political institution in which sovereignty is embodied. An assemblage of states forms a sovereign states system.

PS: I believe the concept of sovereignty itself needs revisiting in the light of metabolics.

PPS: Autopoiesis is better than sovereignty from a metabolic point of view, but there isn't much political philosophy associated with that concept.

PPPS: Even Autopoiesis doesn't cut it, ultimately.