Gnu,
Using the unwise and wasteful act of one person you know down the road, to generalize on a group of people does not seem to make much sense to me, no matter how you position it.

If that were the case, the number of assholes (aka asswholes:)) in the world would take a huge leap upward(and, I suspect we would all be assholes, by association).

Another perspective would be to take a deeper look into the guiding principles of a scoiety, rather than using the acts of one (or more) detatched individual or situation.