Back around Peak Oil time 1997-8 or so, I read Harvey O'Connor's "Empire of Oil" and Ferdinand Lundberg's "America's 60 Families".
Extrapolating from those time periods (1957 and 1933), I didn't foresee anything different from what we have now experienced. This shitfest called "civilization" and its unfettered rapacity is apparently a surprise to some people.
The only faint hope spawned in the '90s was the FairTax.org plan to shift all taxes to a sales tax.
All of the great "thinkers" dismissed it because it was "regressive".
Regressive (with a simple plan) is starting to look pretty damn nice now, but it's way too late.