>I don't know what the answer is, and the powers have pretty much ensured that mechanisms for changing the status-quo are assured to failure. I suppose we can only wait for things to implode.

That's a pretty pessimistic view of things, and as a student of history, I think you're dead wrong. It doesn't take much research to find much, much worse examples of greed and stupidity in action by our forefathers (the collective "our", not the American "our", although we've certainly had our share). Some examples that come to mind include:

1) any of the Crusades, but especially the First, which saw the sack of Constantinople (nominally an ally of Europe) by the Crusaders at the behest of Venetian merchantmen;
2) the Dutch tulip market crash of 1635 (http://www.ricedelman.com/planning/investing/tulipbulbs.asp);
3) the forced importation of opium by the British, which led to two wars with China in the late 1800's;
4) The Boer war, again, instigated by the British in a quest to grab the natural resources of South Africa.

Color me optimistic, but I think we've come a long way as a race, but by no means are we done learning. Capitalism has proven to be one of the strongest and most resiliant forms of societal behaviour yet developed. Does that mean it's perfect? Far from it. There have always been elements in the human race that preys on other humans, and we will continue to suffer from that. Enron was a huge scam that bilked a lot of people out of a lot of money, but we learned from it, and I doubt something like that will happen again (at least while anyone involved remembers what happened).