Regardless of the form of government or economic system, psychopaths eventually rise to power and cause civilizations to fail. These are people whose focus is on power and wealth; nothing else matters.

The power elite psychopaths…

• Change the rules to favor themselves
• Pay workers as little as possible (e.g., prison labor) and charge more than consumers can afford
• Reduce employment through layoffs
• Loot corporations and governments
• Extract resources as quickly as possible, and leave the pollution behind
• Shift the risks and debt burdens to others
• Let taxpayers pick up costs
• Promote illegal, unethical, and immoral behavior, thereby lowering the bar for everyone
• Transform the Earth into a toxic waste dump
• Suck all the money out of the economy and hoard it for themselves

This book makes suggestions about money and power, organizational structures, and beliefs we have about ourselves, which limit our capabilities. We must go beyond articulation of problems and get to the solutions. We need to organize and mobilize, take a disaster in the making and turn it into an opportunity. We need to be the architects of the soft landing (please see the page, The soft landing, on this blog).