The notion that we can take and take and take and take, waste and waste, without consequences, is driving the biosphere

[orthoclad]

2. Seriously, ALL of our modern problems

can be traced to capitalism.

Slavery? Stolen labor for the cotton mills of England and the sugar plantations down south.

Climate change? The steam engine was developed to pump out the coal mines which provided the mills with the extravagant energy needed to churn out those profits. Leads to boilers, coal-fired ships, and internal combustion engines.

Pollution? Toxics all over, many from petrochemicals

Plastic? Petrochemicals

Gunboat diplomacy.

Genocide of the Indigenous and rape of imperial colonies.

Mass extinction. Cancer. Industrial warfare. Etc.

Exploitation only becomes profitable when others pay the external costs.

Stalin and Mao tried to out-capital capital, but the USSR and China backed away from the edge. Trotskyists call the Lenin/Stalin flavor "state capitalism", iirc.

But whatever model we choose, we HAVE to understand external costs - and pay the piper.