From “Business as Usual?, -1” let us see if the perennial assumption, “Everything is fine!” is still intact for you.  That assumption is primarily based on the mercurial standard of money.  When everyone is prospering, everything is fine.  When the market and wages are steady or declining, everything is not fine.  The error of this situation is that money and wealth is not a permanent or timeless measurement of stability and “the common good.”  It is rather the cause of much instability in the world.  

Now suppose that we wanted to replace money as the universal standard of “Everything is fine.”  What would we use as a universal, timeless and immutable measure?  There is only one standard measure that has those qualities:  the three core values of social sustainability, i.e., quality of life, growth and equality.  
The larger question is this, “How do we go about replacing the measure of money with the measure of satisfaction and fulfillment that these three values provide?”  Pragmatically, this will not be accomplished without some significant social, political and economic/financial disruption that puts into question all that is material and of money.  

At present, corporations “own” the federal and most state political processes for their advantage via their lobbies and immensely generous financial campaign contributions.  We can discount that legislators and congress people will change course toward more humane public policies that broaden the common good for everyone.  We can discount that corporations, big business, will voluntarily amend the expansion of their services and products, or that they will voluntarily produce more environmentally friendly products and services.  That won’t happen because big business has such a strangle hold of influence over government.  And, also, these changes will not take place because of the historic paternalistic view that the public is far too immature to accept responsible awareness of the hazards of life and living … that the public would “go wild,” run in the streets rioting and become “out of control.”  

What can we expect will occur?  As any futurist, economic planner, military strategic planner, large corporate economic analyst, insurance actuary or demographic analyst will tell you that sooner than later the Homo sapiens species will experience a major population reduction.  Knowing that, we should plan, much like property development investors:  Develop the plans for a new property and building before the old building is demolished and hauled to the landfill.