Collapse of the shiny pretty things, By Mark Morford [View all]
It's happening now. It's already underway, you just don't feel it yet because we're so goddamn wealthy we can cushion the blow with cash credit cards and cheap foreign labor and oh my God this artisanal boutique coffee at $5 a cup is ridiculously overrated. But never mind that now.
What's that you say? You've heard it all before? The end is nigh and civilization as we know it is on track for serious collapse, meltdown, infrastructure implosion unless -- and this might be the biggest unless in modern world history -- unless there's a major and they do mean major overhaul of how culture, greed and entitlement operate? Sure you have. So did the Romans.
And there's your main culprit, by the way: Greed culture. Consumerism run wild. Ravaging and raping the planet's resources faster and faster because the population is still growing like a weed; after all, everyone loves better food, new cars and shiny bleepy sexy iStuff because, well, who wouldn't? It's totally pleasurable, even magical.
Except when it's not. Except when seven billion people are all craving and clawing for the same shiny things, except when stunning gadget-making factories in China employ nearly one million people and still can't hire people fast enough, except when everything we've been told we should love, crave and buy uses copper and nickel, petroleum and a billion gallons of fresh water to manufacture. ...
(Full URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2012/03/14/notes031412.DTL&nl=fix)
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