The inflation adjusted median income tracks that chart reasonably well, which is pretty interesting. Income equals energy use per time. To burn more energy per time, you need a bigger more controlling civilization machine. People need to spend more aggregate time maintaining and feeding it.
In theory, the early industrial era 1900-1950 was the least energy efficient consumer product time. Today's products and processes are all highly engineered to weed out cost, which is supposedly a proxy for energy.
It's clearly not, though. Use of a plastic part in an internal combustion engine instead of a metal part, for example, should "save" energy, since it saves money, supposedly. Obviously it doesn't in aggregate. The parts break faster, the engines have a shorter useful life and end up in the land fill more rapidly. Plus the supply chain for everything is more complex.
Even though a plastic replacement part looks like it takes less energy to make, it requires a whole different industry with all its capital investments and supply chain. The aggregate use of energy grows. It really is more like rust than advancement.
The way we live is totally nonsensical. Rather than organizing to achieve goals or objective, people organize to feed a system. The system just grows and grows and consumes the people.
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