Bleak future ahead?

Four Horsemen (2012)
Written and Directed by: Ross Ashcroft

This is another independent multiple award-winning documentary that looks at the depressing economic structure that rules the world. It tells us that we are in a mess. Nobody actually knows how the economy works. From the early twentieth century, we have experimented with various models of economies (traditional and neo-conservatives) and political ideologies (right, centre, left, socialism, communism), but nothing seems to work.

The title refers to the biblical 4 horsemen of the Apocalypse in the Book of Revelation, which indicates the days of the Last Judgement. They ride on horses of different hues, white, red, black and pale, each representing Conquest, War, Famine (or justice as he seems to carry a scale perhaps to measure grain or mete justice) and Death respectively to open four of the seven seals of God's hand.
Thinkers have postulated that empires only last 10 generations or 250 years. At the end of a falling empire, the ruling tribe would invariably try to indulge in mega projects with the dwindling state coffers and encourage the former glory and greatness of the kingdom. (sounds familiar?)

The 4 horsemen

Any new discovery/empire will start off with noble intentions by the pioneers who would attain conquest. Their affluence and intelligence would reach a zenith before decadence ensue. Decadence would be characterised by an over-bloated indisciplined army. There would be a conspicuous display of wealth and obsession with sex. Debasement of currency is the next step. The public attention is distracted by apparently unimportant indulgences in celebrities of sports or music (or charioteers or gladiators in the Roman Empire) and culinary skills. (hint again?)
If we look carefully, all of the above repeatedly happen prior fall of any empire.

Human beings have always been inconsistent and paradoxical in their actions. On the one hand, they want peace, and on the other, they create new ways to annihilate each other. They sometimes perform the noblest of acts and, at another, banal atrocities! On one side of the society, there is obesity and the other famine.
Greed is the fundamental pillar of a modern economy. There is enough in the world for everybody's need but for everybody's greed.

After the depression in the 30s, there was legislation to separate retail high street banking and investment banking. Under the Reagan-Thatcherian free market, this legislation had been debunked. As a result, banks indulge in gambling, hand out loans like freebies and hold countries at ransom if they fail. As the leaders depend on lobbyists for their political survival, who are dependent on banks, the bankers' failure has to be rescued by public money. In a way, this is socialism for the rich.

This dichotomy has led to many unhappy people in the country. Military interference and 'aid which never reaches the intended recipient' by the superpowers only led to terrorism. Aid only benefit the elite and the foreign companies affiliated with the superpowers.

The neo-conservatives approach to the economy does not care about the environment and have no qualms in their rapacious abuse of nature for individualistic gains, all in the name of progress.
Even though this documentary paints a very nihilistic picture, it also managed to stimulate debates amongst intelligentsia and academicians to suggest a better blueprint to better distribute the world's wealth.

At the same time, there is a perception that the economists themselves do not know what they are talking about. They only tell you what you want to hear without telling the negative aspects involved.

"The fact is most people think that what a bank does, is lend you money that someone else has put in the bank previously.  But what a bank actually does - what a commercial bank does - is to create money, from nothing, and then lend it to you at interest.  If I do that, if I manufacture money in my own home, it's called counterfeiting.  If an accountant creates money out of nothing in the company account, it's called cooking the books.  But if a bank does it, it's perfectly legal.  And, so long as you allow fraud to be legalized, then all kinds of problems are going to pop up in the economic system that you can't do anything about." - excerpted from the video