Pinko lords and stinking peasants

Another angle: Jared Diamond in his recent book Collapse supplies a clue to how a peculiar form of madness can grip a people and lead to economic demise. He looks at the wasteland that used to be Easter Island, with those forlorn heads staring into the abyss, and asks: what idiot chopped down the last tree, in order to move those heads to their resting places?