This text by Jeff Vail, from March 2008, is still very much worth reading and pondering. The non-excerpted part of this text deals with the positive construction of a rhizome-based world, but in this excerpt, he convincingly links hierarchical social forms to the problem of infinite growth. Thanks to Ryan Lanham for the suggestion.

Jeff Vail:

Infinite growth is impossible in a finite world–a great deal of economic growth may be possible without a growth in resource consumption, but eventually the notion of perpetual growth is predicated on perpetual increase in resource consumption. This growth in resource consumption causes problems: it brings civilization into direct conflict with our environmental support system. Growth is also one way of improving the standard of living for humanity by creating more economic produce, more material consumption per human. Growth, however, produces very unevenly distributed benefits, and there is little convincing evidence that the poorest, most abused 10% of humanity is actually better off today than the poorest, most abused