The broken clock

Where was the broken clock again? Above the restaurant?

Remember when that one regular told the cafe owner that he should buy new batteries for that clock, when the owner was replacing the clock's battery with the ones from the tv remote control? The owner replied that the clock must be broken and it had nothing to do with the batteries, then he'd replace the batteries for the control and the clock so many times that neither the control nor the clock function anymore.
The working clock represents the system, with the batteries representing the view of a our resources (energy, labor, natural resources) as being infinite. We exploit our resources because we believe they are neverending. By blaming the clock's failure to function on the actual clock, the cafe owner reveals that we need to adjust and update the system so as to extract all possible resources most efficiently, all the while never changing the state of our resources.
Am I *beep*