I think it's a perspective problem. Since this issue is more complex, I'll use a simpler one - nuclear weapons. There has not been major unrestrained warfare di

I think it's a perspective problem. Since this issue is more complex, I'll use a simpler one - nuclear weapons. There has not been major unrestrained warfare directly between modern nations in what's approaching a century. Very few people alive today have lived through this sort of warfare. So it becomes a unicorn. Yet we still have things like nuclear weapons. And people see these as a relic of times past. Why would you want these sort of weapons when this sort of warfare no longer exists? And so naturally we have an increasing push to try to get rid of nuclear weapons, a stark reminder of a 'less enlightened times.' Of course the reality is that this era of peace we've created has largely been enabled by nuclear weapons. Mutually assured destruction is indeed MAD but it has been the one thing, in the entire history of our species, that has managed to prevent this sort of conflict. Without nuclear weapons nations like the US, China, and Russia would certainly have long since came to 'hot war' in the process of determining who's ideology will be the world ideology. And that certainly would have drawn in the rest of the world, one way or the other: to wit, World War 3. And so too today in economics, most people have lived during an era when the US has been more than capable of 'printing' (not how many is made - another complex topic) vast sums of money while suffering no real economic consequence, as well as being involved a system where we are only able to pay off old debts by taking on new debts - with no expectation of this ever really changing. If a private organization was behaving as we do, it would be considered a Ponzi Scheme. The reasons for this economic immunity are complex -- the fact our currency is indirectly backed by oil is a major player. But the point is is that people don't see any nuance here. We've always been able to behave this way (from the perspective of most people), so why would anything suddenly change? Probably a similar scenario to what happens at the end of any other meaningfully long era.