Essays
Exit Farming is an intimate account of our personal exit. It is rooted in lived decisions, private costs, and the mechanics of building a different life by hand.
The writing collected on this page is different.
These pieces are not memoir. They are observations, arguments, and responses to the world as it is unfolding. They deal with work, power, collapse, institutional failure, and the ways ordinary people are managed, extracted from, and disciplined by systems that present themselves as inevitable.
Where the book is inward and specific, these essays are outward-facing. They engage current events, policy, media narratives, and cultural habits, tracing how abstract systems produce concrete harm. They are less about what we did and more about what is happening.
The tone is sharper. The scope is broader. The distance is intentional.
These writings exist alongside the book, not as explanations or supplements, but as a separate body of work. If the book is a record of departure, these essays are an ongoing attempt to name what is breaking and why.
Links below lead to pieces published elsewhere.
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A Salon commentary by Sean Carlton on how West Virginia’s data center boom mirrors the state’s coal-era extraction economy. The piece traces how tax exemptions, stripped local control, and massive power and water demands turn data centers into modern strip mines that export value while leaving communities with the costs. Read here.
Salon | December 28, 2025
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A CounterPunch op-ed by Sean on how higher education shifted from a promise of stability to a mechanism for debt extraction. It examines stagnant wages, collapsing career horizons, and the return of wage garnishment as proof that the social contract around college has failed. Read here.
CounterPunch | December 25, 2025
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A CounterPunch exclusive by Sean on why violence and spectacle are not anti-system work, and how media attention turns killing into content that ultimately strengthens the institutions people think it challenges. It argues that real resistance is quiet, anonymous, and rooted in withdrawal, not visibility. Read here.
CounterPunch | December 19, 2025
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An op-ed by Sean on how federal bailouts have replaced real farm policy and why a sector that needs this level of intervention after routine disputes is already in structural collapse. Read here.
CounterPunch | December 11, 2025
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A New Republic op-ed by Sean on why firewood banks aren’t a heartwarming story about rural generosity but a warning that basic systems have already failed. It shows how wood is becoming the last reliable heat source in places where institutions no longer work. Read here.
The New Republic | December 9, 2025
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A CounterPunch op-ed by Sean on why record holiday spending isn’t evidence of a healthy economy. It’s proof that families are leaning on buy now, pay later to survive a season that used to feel simple. Read here.
CounterPunch | December 5, 2025
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A CounterPunch op-ed by Sean on how billionaires are being framed as public institutions, and why the Dell “Trump Accounts” giveaway is less generosity and more evidence of a country outsourcing its social contract to private wealth. Read here.
CounterPunch | December 4, 2025
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An op-ed by Sean on why declining birth rates are not a faith crisis but a collapse of the conditions needed to raise kids in modern America. Read here.
Splice Today | December 2, 2025