This video talks about the problem of Americans uncontrollable desire to buy things they don't need.

Af-flu-en-za n. 1. The bloated, sluggish and unfulfilled feeling that results from efforts to keep up with the Joneses. 2. An epidemic of stress, overwork, waste and indebtedness caused by dogged pursuit of the American Dream. 3. An unsustainable addiction to economic growth. 4. A television program that could change your life.

Affluenza is a one-hour television special that explores the high social and environmental costs of materialism and overconsumption.

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The Lean Economy: A Vision of Civility for a World in Trouble

DAVID FLEMING, The Annual Feasta Lecture

excerpts:

The coming oil shock is not the only reason why the prospects for the global market economy and for civilisation as a whole look poor. A complex system, such as a car or a human body, tends at the end of its life to fail in many different ways at about the same time. http://i.am/jah/greeneco.htm

A second sign of systems failure is climate change. http://i.am/jah/signs.htm

Thirdly, there is the complex and still poorly-understood issue of how a mature market economy can, even under ideal conditions, sustain the perpetual economic growth which is an essential condition for its stability: along with Richard Douthwaite and others I argue that it simply cannot do so.
http://i.am/jah/socio.htm

Fourthly, there is the increasingly intense phenomenon of disengagement ­ a failure of participation, consent, shared values, social cohesion ­ in short, a failure of social capital which ultimately matures into insurgency, both from dissidents on the outside of modern society and from within it. The system is failing in many other ways: soil fertility, water, hormone disruptors, the collapse of fisheries ­ but that is enough for now. http://i.am/jah/syst.htm

If we put all these together, then we find ourselves looking at the climax of the market economy, followed by its comprehensive failure, very high unemployment and an atrophy of government revenues, leading towards what could be called hyperunemployment - that is, unemployment so high that government cannot fund subsistence payments and pensions. Unemployment on this scale means no income. No income means no food. No food means the collapse of urban populations on the scale experienced by former civic societies ­ the Romans and some two dozen other accomplished civilisations ­ in the closing phase of their life-cycles. I hope I am wrong or, rather, that it doesn't come to this. But it does seem obvious to me that the opportunity is rapidly passing in which it will be possible to avoid the high levels of mortality that have been associated with the collapse of other civic societies.

By Adam Porter Tuesday 22 February 2005, 6:46 Makka Time, 3:46 GMT
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/80C89E7E-1DE9-42BC-920B-91E5850FB067.
htm

As oil prices remain above $45 a barrel, a major market mover has
cast a worrying future prediction.

Energy investment banker Matthew Simmons, of Simmons & Co International,
has been outspoken in his warnings about peak oil before. His new
statement is his strongest yet, "we may have already passed peak