Health or Wealth :: essays papers

Health or Wealth Market forces, in my belief, abide always shaped the relationship between humans and their environment, and I have found it a daunting task to consider the history of such a long and complicated relationship. In all truth, market forces git be considered as anything that drives our means of consumption and our economy as a whole, and from this point of view, they can be seen as existing in some way since the dawn of time. So, instead of starting at the beginning, I will instead focus on the relationship between humans and nature from the start of what I see as the beginning of the end. The capitalist economys history, when viewed in light of mans accurate existence, has been rather short and in that span of time, it has managed to catapult much of the world into a very spic-and-span and destructive relationship with the Earths natural resources. While the changes that capitalism has brought about have been slow to evolve, it is a system that has deepl y altered much more than the marketplace and which has forever changed the world. In this paper, I intend to dispute how the core concepts of the capitalist economy have lead the world into ecological disaster. There are many structures on which capitalism is built and a some of the most core principles are the ones that are most destructive. The tenets of individualism, efficiency, profit maximization and consumerism can be found at the heart of many of the most prejudicious practices of todays world. Since they are main pillars of the capitalist marketplace, they are very pervasive and have become widespread, standard practices and ways of thinking. Individualism it is a new development in our social structure and one that has left a very deep impression. While capitalism did not spring up overnight, the percentage point of its development is not relevant to this analysis, so I shall consider capitalism from some hypothetical starting point. Up until this starting point, the community was the key unit of sociological structure. Families and communities were tightly knit and gave support to one another. This type of lifestyle provided an accurate sense about how one persons actions relate everything around them and the relationship that humans had with their environment reflected this awareness.