Book excerpt: Six young people came to the conclusion that the whole world was heading for disaster. The government was no longer anything vaguely resembling the picture most people had of it. The bureaucratic empire-¬builders, the special interest groups, the politicians themselves, for the most part, cared little about those people they supposedly represented and this was slowly becoming something entirely different, a kind of government of itself, by itself, for itself, self-protecting and self-perpetuating, but huge cracks were forming in its foundations. Overpopulation was rapidly proving old man Malthus to be correct in his doctrine that a finite object like the earth could not feed an infinite population. Instead of living, breeding, and dying in their mud huts and tin shacks without once ever questioning the way things were, they were shown all the marvels and wonders of flush toilets, the pleasure of a full belly, the power of a dollar, and, quite reasonably, they wanted it for themselves and their children.