The population has in principle some way of influencing what they do, even if not much in practice. It absolutely overwhelms government resources, even overwhelms the European Union. What's particularly interesting is that the composition of the capital has changed very radically. Richard Nixon dismantled the Bretton Woods system, the postwar economics system, in 1970. Speculative capital, for example in bonds, which is speculation against currencies, is interested in low growth.
Growth tends to make currencies unstable.
What you want is a low growth, low wage, high profit economy. There was a study done by a US group headed by Paul Volcker, who was the head of the Federal Reserve under Reagan, a respected economist. There's been a considerable decline in the growth rate since 1970 and they attribute about half of that decline just to speculation in the currency markets, which forces governments to back off from economic stimulus. It has gotten to the point where you can read a front-page story in the New York Times on the fear of growth. I also saw in the Australian papers, this concern that growth is too fast, people are doing too well, there are too many jobs and too much money.