Until our global economic society reaches some type of equilibrium we will be subject to these boom bust greed cycles. That equilibrium can only come about through all productive individuals focusing half their productive energies in altruistic directions, rather than maintaining an overbalancing greed focus. From where I sit the tide of our social progress appears to be receding quickly (granted, that may be because I appear to have taken the moral high ground in this epistle). Without forward social momentum we lose the sustainable level of individual morality that works to bind society together (my guess is you’d need at least a third of your youth focused on progressive pastimes just to cover social self maintenance). Given what is happening to the USD, the US might have peaked already as the world’s lead culture. The mantel of progress could be shifting to other cultures around the globe as we live and breath. But that’s something for future historians to argue over.

Doesn’t matter how good your economic theories are then. Given enough technological leverage and social saturation, the fundamental greed-based economic model is a model for the destruction of social values/rights and ultimately of society itself. Of course, society is unlikely to fall apart from these pressures under our stewardship. That’s the sort of legacy we will be leaving to those yet to come: we came, we saw, we fucked it up – it’s your world now, you fix it! I bet the lead generations during the decline of the Roman Empire didn’t really care too much about sustaining legacies either; more likely they pursued available hedonistic pleasures more vigorously.