Are we headed towards a progress trap?

Surviving Progress explores the social, political and economic mechanisms driving us toward seeming self-annihilation. At one point Simon Johnson, former chief economist for the IMF, says:

The bankers can’t stop themselves. It’s in their DNA, in the DNA of their organizations, to take massive risks, to pay themselves ridiculous salaries and to collapse….

And it's true that it's in the DNA of these organizations. But I was relieved when some of the talking heads stopped blaming the bankers and the corporations and the politicians and acknowledged that we are the bankers, we work at the companies. And even if we're not literally them, we buy their cell phones, and their cars, and their home equity loans.

It's in all of us, this hunger, this short-sightedness, this materialism. If it weren't, marketing wouldn't work on us. If it weren't, only the rare, weak politician would be seduced by lobbyists. If it weren't, "the 1%" would be ephemeral, not perpetual.

Great film for a book club. (Ha ha. But honestly.)