From John O'Hara, Mount Waverley, Victoria, Australia
Whatever value Earth Overshoot Day may have as a measure of the rate at which we are thrashing the planet, Mathis Wackernagel is on the money in describing typical economic activity as the largest “Ponzi scheme” (4 August, p 20).
The dominant global economic paradigm in the developed world is neoliberal capitalism. It ticks four boxes recognised as defining a Ponzi scheme: it is predicated on infinite growth, which is an impossibility in a finite world; when growth stops it falls over; there is no way to a soft landing; and the precise point of collapse can't be predicted. The reason this description hasn't registered in mass consciousness is the longish time span to collapse.
