Imaginery wealth

Many people in developed countries have seen circumstances make money rapidly for them. They have become wealthy through the creation of fiat money rather than by their know how of physical efforts. Financial commentators argue that the growth of sovereign debt in many countries is a boom that is bound to bust. But the well off in society are living the day with their wealth which, despite the protestations that it is only fiat money, is still able to pay for their desires. It is real wealth as far as they are concerned as they indulge in tours to foreign lands, lapping up the sales that plague TV, live in McMansions, drive SUVs and glorify showing off their high material standard of living. It helps their self esteem to be able to show that they have made it. They do not understand that they are parasites feeding off natural resource
wealth without society paying for it.

Governments do their utmost to foster economic growth as it encourages full employment and their return to lucrative office. Businesses compete in their ability to sell goods and services so as to make money for their managers and shareholders. They build skyscrapers, housing estates, freeways, tunnels and other infrastructure by irrevocably using up limited natural resources.These powerful bodies lead the way in the ravishing of our life support system

Even scientists who strive hard to gain understanding in their particular field are victims of this rapacious disease. Climatologists fly to far off places to make measurements of aspects of climate change they can report on in peer-reviewed papers, so making their own contributions to greenhouse gas emissions! Government specialists fly to conferences so they can convey to like contributors their findings of what is going wrong in their field.

Many informed people know how numerous past civilizations collapsed. The ruins of cities in central America, Asia and the Middle East provide anthropologists with insight into what happened. Some authors have provided sound argument for the demise of our industrialized civilization. But the masses are uninformed and the elite have the irrational belief that the leverage of their money will ease their powering down. So it is still full steam ahead for the vast global population and the operation of the infrastructure it is so dependent on as the cliff gets closer. It is almost as though society is determined to go out with a flourish, the wish of addictives as their demise looms.