The American Dream, An Unsustainable Nightmare

Abstract

America is arguably the greatest nation on our planet at this time. Its achivements in all fields of arts and sciences act as a shining beacon of the accomplishments of the human race. Fueled to such epic proportions of greatness, two of the stimuli have been the amazing natural wealth found on this land and its ability to attract talented indivuduals from across the globe. Digging deeper into the foundations of the American Dream, we find that a key ingredient has been the unencumbered pursuit of happiness as defined by the utility maximization principle of economics, the acceptance of seeking ever greater amounts of material goods and the axiom of the invisible hand. We conceptually discuss the asymptotic path of where this could lead to, perhaps, to an Unsustainable Nightmare. We ask the question if the social planner or the utility maximizer were the Budha (or any other wiseman) what this alternative view of the world coud be and whether it is practical enough to shape our future. The argument that the Budha is nothing close to the model citizen can be laid to rest by realizing that all education is but to establish better morals and by looking back at the enormous strides that we have taken as a society in overcoming hatred, crime and other forms oppression and misbehaviour.