Ecological integrity

It was not only the symbolism of each plague, it was also the effect of each plague on the general populace and on their material condition that peeled the Egyptian people away from their acceptance of the pharaoh's (the palace’s) supremacy, and disabused them of enjoying the usefulness of the Children of Israel in that centralized system. 

The logic of the Ten Plagues was to wreak ecological havoc on the Egyptian nation. YHWH did not introduce foreign armies onto Egyptian soil to challenge the ruling class. Instead, He brought on ecological collapse. He disqualified the ruling class from within its own failure to steward the bounty of the land. When Elohim in Genesis tells Man to conquer the land and to rule over the fishes and the birds and the animals He is addressing the rulers, and He is setting up for them their ultimate measure of the proper or improper administration of power. The evidence of the bankruptcy of the resource curse is a series of ecological disasters that will be brought down upon the heads of the peoples who yield to a political, economic, cultural and spiritual system that concentrates power in the owners of the resource rather than in the hands of those who would moderate the exploitation of the resource so that it could revive itself. 

For the people of Israel, the alternative to the Egyptian experience is the laws of sheviit and shemitta. Along with the laws of Shabbos, sheviit and shemitta comprehend the imposition of an artificially induced rhythm, both at the scale of days, decades and centuries, that would allow the general populace to create their own feasts and famines, and so to provide for them properly. Shabbos, sheviit and shemitta make for a healthy ecology, the antidote to the ecological collapse the Plagues engendered. The strongman rulers want to moderate the cycle of feasts and famines because a smooth business cycle keeps the power out of the people’s hands. Imposing feast and famine leads to the strengthening of the ideology that would undermine the hold the strongman rulers might have over their societies. 

Extremism is a manifestation of the violation of the ecological balance that comes of indifferent exploitation of God's allottment. The proper administration of His Shabbatot is the fulfillment of the original Biblical injunction for Man to serve as proper stewards over the ecology. At first, before the era of Noah, there was too little heirarchy in the natural order, which resulted in the flesh becoming corrupted. The land had to be drowned because the flesh had become spoiled. With the introduction, in the post-Noahide era, of more power over the animals, the challenge was to moderate the power of the human rulers over each other. God rebuilt a world that allowed Man directly to consume that over which he had to serve as steward. The Noahide catastrophe came about from the degradation of the flesh. Today's catastrophe will come about from the degradation of the land itself, and of the skies. 

The resource curse and the Midas touch are both instances of hubris for failing to recognize Man's place in the order of things, and for failing to submit to the sovereignty of God over His portion, be it in the way Man exploits the land or in the way Man despoils the skies.