Voluntary simplicity, not necessarily antagonistic toward the establishment

I tend to be a critic of mainstream society and I lean a bit to the left, but I understand (or at least I think I understand) why business, corporations and the government operate the way they do. Why mainstream society that is thought of as the "establishment" is the way it is. A lot of it is the numbers, issues like economy of scale (we studied that in economic geography) and the way people, in our culture at least, tend to behave in a mass market.

The way the establishment runs could be better, but I tend to focus on how we can radically, in some ways, change culture and our personal lives. I'm a fan of less wealth oriented lifestyles, but at the same time I don't necessarily see prosperity as evil. I also am a fan of advancing technology.

Tho I don't see prosperity as evil, I do see much of it as unsustainable. Unsustainable given our environment and especially our current fossil fuel based technologies.

Prosperity can also be unsustainable given our health and our ability to keep up with the rat race. The natural human body. A life less based on traditional measures of prosperity can offer joys that most people seem to overlook. Slowing down has much virtue. Slowing down doesn't necessarily mean giving up on modernity, tho. Not necessarily giving up on technology. I find there is a big disconnect between advancing technology and wealth. Technology, such as often is the case on the internet, can be very disruptive of wealth.

While I tend to blame people for most of our problems, I realize that there is a need to control the power of business; especially large corporations.

Our problems are often the result of a vicious cycle between people's market behavior shaping business decisions while business shapes human behavior. There's the power of advertising, media and laws that are often in favor of the status quo. What could be called crony capitalism.