That's what it takes to make one rich person: lots of poor people.
And the purpose of Western civiLIEzation is to scale globally to impoverish the world and benefit a select few.
Indeed, the alleged "Clash of Civilizations" between the West and Islam, at heart, is motivated by Islam's refusal to allow usury, the West's preferred means for creating poor people to sustain the few truly rich. While religious differences and intolerance are often touted as the reason for the West's aggression against Islam, the only religious difference that matters is never discussed: Islam's ban on usury. Only through conquest or usury can the West maintain the illusion of exponential growth required to sustain it. Without more people to impoverish through usury, Western civiLIEzation will sputter and die.
Forget Peak Oil. Peak Credit is what really matters to Western economies, and we have reached it. Yes, oil is important, but oil's importance is secondary to the fact that almost 25% of the world's population is off-limits to the West's usury.
Western civiLIEzation is done. This does not mean that any form of collapse is imminent, or even that collapse is inevitable. CiviLIEzation is fueled by fictions to which we need not chain our fates.
