To rank five things causing massive loss to Western society, I'd say they were;

- War (the ultimate sacrificial alter of value)

- Sickness (premature death snatching away human capital)

- Child and domestic abuse (trauma inhibits)

- Corruption (financial loss and crisis)

- Professional management (a deep sickness of motive)

What is the real cost of employing millions of people to bullshit each other? Benjamin Ginsberg first rang alarm bells on "The Fall of the Faculty" over a decade ago. Since then, the damage done to education, research and academic life by the infection of bureaucracy is immeasurable. To think of all the good professors leaving the vocation, the students who drop out disillusioned, and the piss-poor educations they receive, the debt, and mediocrity of vision, it's heartbreaking. Our universities have been eviscerated. The result for industry and society is a colossal bonfire of wealth.