problems

what?

another way to look at it:  the rule of aristocracy, first of birth and then of wealth and power, that has been instituted as modern globalization, descends from the European model of accountability; that is, you get whatever you want and wield law and trade and politics as weapons to do so.  these are the evils of monarchy and standing armies and central banks that Washington and Jefferson and Adams railed against.

and yet, what does the United States, modern imperial power par excellence, possess?  a political system geared towards deflecting attention away from the actual decisions of governance, the largest and most expensive standing army in the history of the world, and a worldwide financial system of central banks and centralized financial institutions.

there are three oncoming crises that the world faces.  financial meltdown, peak oil and climate change.  of these, dealing with the fantastically bankrupt worldwide financial system seems simplest, in that there exist practical solutions.  they aren't particularly palatable, but governments and individuals could continue on with their lives, even if large numbers of corporations and financial entities couldn't.  the end of cheap oil, on the other hand, or the consequences of global climate change, can't be dealt with as easily.  you can't nationalize the waves or wind and command them to stop, or order natural resources to give themselves up in a cost-efficient manner.

as John Kenneth Galbraith said, "Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists in choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable."

the worst choice, and the default path of action for most people, is to continue doing what they are doing already.

the current model of governance would be to use these crises to extract more opportunity for control and more wealth from these near-insoluble situations.  shake down the consumer, get more money out of his pocket, drain the treasury and transfer it into your accounts receivable to make the shareholders happy.  bonuses for all the executives!  everyone can buy more cheap Chinese-manufactured goods with their rapidly depreciating fiat paper currency, until the music stops.

and there's the real problem.  taking steps to prolong the party, keep the music going at all costs, prop up the markets and keep the investors happy, merely delays the onset of the consequences and in some cases greatly magnifies them instead of taking hard, critical steps to fix the underlying issues.  sustainability isn't just a green buzzword, it's what civilization is all about.  maintaining the quality of life going forwards.  making sacrifices today so that your children and grandchildren receive the benefits of your labor.  irrigation, roads, harbors, codes of law, fortifications and electrical grids were built so that the society of today could extend into tomorrow.  if they fall apart, so does all that you've worked to build and keep going.

when governments and institutions stop this, individuals start doing it themselves.  that cutover is not clean and well-managed and orderly.

if you're lucky, it happens slowly, over centuries, so that by the time the last Western Roman Emperor is deposed, no one outside the crumbling city walls of Rome notices or gives a damn; you just keep on farming and raising your kids and keep up good relations with the local strongman, whatever his name is or how he dresses or what he smells like.

if not, archeologists come across the ruined cities and abandoned fields and overgrown roads centuries later and try to decipher the language, wondering what the hell happened and where all the people went.

natural market forces can be used to dispense profit and create wealth.  equally acceptable outcomes for the Invisible Hand are starvation, epidemics, resource conflicts and collapse.  in other words:  Famine, Pestilence, War and Death.

you don't want apocalypse to happen to you.