California thus seems to be doing its level best to come to ruin and, as the nation's largest economy, to drag the country's hopes for a recovery down with it.
The latter, in particular, presents a catch twenty-two: man will sow his destruction if he exploits natural resources, but he risks perishing if he does not do so.
Everyone said this would be suicidal, but surprise, surprise, it returned 150 million yuan during its first weekend, a very respectable performance for this genre.
Case studies are clearly useful in showing how dishonest tycoons can come undone, or revealing how tricky dilemmas - whether, say, to fire loyal but inefficient employees - can be finessed.
Although church ritual had sustained an interest in timekeeping throughout the centuries of urban collapse that followed the fall of Rome, church time was nature's time.
After the fall of Rome, the first European society to regulate behaviour in private life in accordance with a complicated code of etiquette was twelfth-century Provence, in France.