Tying the original comment in with ICLOK's savvy insight,
The evolution of the human population has made injustices necessary in the struggle for "survival". The free market and it's ramifications are as fundamental to humans as hands or ears. Clearly, as population carries on growing, the struggle becomes even more fierce and at some point something has to give. It will trash the environment and people will come up against very hard times in due course, probably overpopulated areas who have not mitigated against peak oil.
So, there are several approaches to dealing with this. One approach practised by all varieties of tie colour in Brit Politics seems to be social democracy. (it isn't actually democratic, but we'll ignore that, like they do). I'm very interested in the thinking behind current politics and reading the ideologies of socialism is quite scary. Forced inclusion and forced equality deny reality.
We've come from a ruling class decimating the world, to another ruling class who are as far removed from reality as the miners were from Bassett's wealth in 1850.
I'm not sure what the future is, but the current crop of idiots have reality denial down to such a fine art, all hell could erupt.
ICLOK, you should have said "welcome to the EUSSR" ;)
There will be a point in the future where mining starts impacting the countryside closer to home and it will be interesting to see how the "standard of life" people clash with "the standard of the environment" people. Sadly, mining is taxable and generates wealth, whereas smelly hippies don't.
People will start digging up Kernow again at some point and there will be hell up.
You can try and strangle their profits with eco taxes and communitarian principles, but the bottom line is that Social Democracy survives on the taxes of people actually doing something.......
moan mode off.... 🙂