As Edward Abbey pointed out two decades ago, «It should be clear to everyone by now that crude
numerical growth does not solve our chronic problems of unemployment, welfare, crime, traffic, filth, noise, squalor, the pollution of our air, the corruption of our politics, the debasement of the school
system (hardly worthy of the
name «education»), and the general loss of popular control over the political process — where money, not people, is now the determining factor.»