The United States and the world have both grown rapidly in the past century due to industrial and technological advances, but every structure must be built on a solid foundation and the current lack of quality suggest that he inner fiber of the economic community may be rotten through. 

Assuming, then, my postulata is granted, I say, that power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man." 

Thomas Robert Malthus  

An Essay on the Principle of Populatoin, 1798

   In 1999 two well-known car companies, X and Y for our purposes, were having their yearly sales competition. The latter sold twice as many cars but the former grossed almost three times the total income of its opponent. How can this be possible when both companies priced their products within the same ranges? What occurred here is modern capitalism. Company Y made a stronger more durable automobile, but company X made and continues to make a flimsier car that is more inclined to experience minor repair issues. Ironically X corporation made more than Y because prior to this time cars had been built to endure the test of time. Y corporation created a car that would not just be a one time sell, but a consistent fixture in the dealer's body shop due to all its minor maintenance needs. 

In 1798 a British engineer named Thomas Malthus declared that all humanity would be extinct due to starvation in 1890! Luckily this prediction did not come to pass; however, the answer to the question "what will be humanities demise" has sparked centuries of debate and a whirlwind of passionate conjecture towards the apocalypse. 

Eschatology, the study of the events that will lead up to "the end of time" is often represented by Albrecht Durer's Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Are the end of time and the end of the world simultaneous events? Has mankind become so narcissistic to believe the rest of nature operates on the same time scale as ourselves? 

People are extremely concerned with "the end," but the rate at which humanity reproduces is still accelerating exponentially in the positive direction (this is not to say that mankind is growing the correct direction, simpler stated if the population were to be graphed the curve would continue to move in a numerically positive x and y direction). 

In science we see that every population no matter the species, location, or resource availability has some carrying capacity. Carrying capacity is defined as the maximum number of individuals that an ecosystem can support without permanently depleting the avaliable resources. As the human population continues to climb closer to 8 billion, we must wonder what the Earth's carrying capacity is and what the effects of reaching this number will have on our planet. 

The consistent desire for expansion has lead to a industry dominated world that lacks stability and a solid foundation to maintain this current growth. Companies all over the world are choosing to go the path of company X and create breakable "stuff" that accumulates in Earth's oceans and landmasses. Cassandric  prophets continue to preach the necessity for biodiversity and need for humanity to compromise with the rest of creation or forever be doomed to Mother Nature's Sisyphatic rage.