SETE 2.0: The Phase-Space Dynamics of Circulating Surplus, Ideological Goal-Seeking, and Systemic Collapse

This paper expands upon the Socio-Economic Thermodynamic Entropy (SETE) model to formally integrate the mechanisms of structural inequality, information theory, and ideological goal-seeking. Whilst the original SETE framework established the political economy as an inertial mass orbiting a Resource Entropy Singularity (S_crit), it left the distribution of surplus exergy and the system’s directional imperatives largely implicit. Here, we introduce the ‘Wealth Siphon’ coefficient (α), decomposing it to explicitly model rent-seeking, wealth hoarding, and the temporal blockages of financialisation, establishing the baseline for Effective Circulating Power (P_eff). We demonstrate that α acts as a Shannon Entropy filter, whilst Institutional Mass (M_I) functions as a measure of information density that actively warps socio economic phase-space. By mapping these variables alongside an Ideological Control Function (G), we prove that a civilisation’s trajectory towards collapse becomes structurally locked at the Entropic Event Horizon (H) long before absolute energy depletion. Furthermore, we introduce the concepts of Alarmism Fatigue (γ), the Information Siphon, and Metabolic Decoherence, demonstrating how the very act of maintaining civilisational complexity physically deletes viable future trajectories. Under ‘Strong Enlightenment’ paradigms—driven by anthropocentric and mechanistic axioms that rationalise r-Strategy expansion—increases in gross exergy (P_gross) and financialisation actively accelerate systemic instability by amplifying Entropic Gravity.