The human race today is spending enormous resources to provide the means of existence, even the most basic ones. The quantity of resources being expended is growing because human needs are constantly expanding and are even being artificially cultivated. This is occurring at the expense of resources that are increasingly necessary to solve other vital tasks, tasks that are being posed with ever increasing urgency. This is an abnormal development.

From: Gorbachev: On My Country and the World
By: Mikhail Gorbachev