Work Reform

I keep repeating this to people. In less then 200 years we destroyed a balance that took millions of years to build itself.

One of the reasons why capitalism seems to work so well in Western democracies is because it's short-sighted.

Capitalism focuses on the immediate future - the next year or a few years, and any material gains that can be made in that time frame. Businesses rarely plan for 10+ years into the future, because their products or services may no longer be financially feasible by then.

Just like our democratic governments focus on the next 4 years or less, because afterwards the government will likely change. No point making plans that your political opponents will benefit from. Which is also why the West can't get anything substantial done.

That's because it's coupled with modern medical marvels, like the discovery of antibiotics, which has led to a wildfire of population growth. Also, the "Industrial Revolution" where we yoke machines into assembly thus yielding more output, which encouraged more population growth -- especially within the food sector.

Capitalism did exist in the 19th Century, but because Gangrene, Rickets, and other maladies, it was slowed. It was also slowed because electricity hadn't been harnessed yet.

Basically, this assertion is ignoring the crossroad of human progress: discoveries in medicine, harnessing electricity, Industrial Revolution and assembly lines, and recent electrolytic tabulation (aka computers).

We've had a few extinction events, and I suspect even the Holocene extinction event (which is already in progress) will not be as bad as the Permian–Triassic.

Right now, three possibilities are in the running to kill off humans:
~ Climate-change induced famine and drought
~ Nuclear escalation (The US is looking at broader options... using low-yield nuclear weapons in a regional conflict)
~ AI takeover, which will likely look like the owner class developing armies of murderbots to annex the world before the AI accidentally determines they are a target as well. (And less so the Yudkowsky and Soares scenario.)

But humans are more likely to do what Homo Erectus did and go through a low population phase. They had a population less than 10,000 for millennia for a while before expanding again, only to get wiped out by competition with their cousins.

But even if humans die, life on earth will regrow across millions of years, and may even evolve intelligence and technology.

While not denying it is one of the main factors, let's not forget the massive, continuous and egregious ecological disregard the directed economies had, and have.

You should measure by existence of society, not earth's age. Same conclusion though.

yeah, but another billion dollars and being so rich that you'll never be able to spend it in MANY lifetimes is so great.

/s

The soviet union wasn't exactly great environmental stewards either. Perhaps the problem is a technological gap between industrilization and sustainability.

An extinction event is currently ongoing that humans caused

capitalism needs systems to internalize the negative externalities certian processes create