Additionally, economics faithfully serves a capitalist system in which a minority owns and controls the means by which existence is collectively reproduced, determining thereby the character and direction of development, the social relations with nature, and the way people are created as kinds of human beings. Production is organized not as a social activity that directly satisfies needs, nor as useful work that employs everyone in satisfying ways, but as a profit-making endeavor in which needs are met and people employed only when profit can be made. Profits are driven by elitist desires for conspicuous consumption (at the extreme, a dress that costs $15,000, made to be worn just once; a string of pearls costing $3 million) but also by the constant need for reinvestment inherent in competitive market relations. In 20th-century capitalism, mass consumption becomes the main source of pleasure; more consumption means a better life. Elitist desires, the competitive need for profit, the substitution of machines for human labor power, the pursuit of the latest style or gadget—all are endlessly expansive: economic growth becomes a necessity rather than a choice. Under its driving force, production is escalated and rapid economic growth occurs, but the natural consequences are depleted resources, energy sources used up, and pollution multiplied, while all the time poor peoples’ needs remain tragically unmet amidst landscapes of casual overabundance. But now, after 200 years of plundering the natural world and discharging poisonous effluents and pollutants with reckless abandon, we see signs that natural limitations may impose, at the risk of annihilation, a transformation in social relations, modes of thought, life-styles, and systems of ethical morality. These relations between economic growth and the natural environment are basic structural contradictions that necessitate fundamental human and societal change.