I realise now we're talking at cross-purposes. I'm not talking about population growth, which is not really relevant to the problems at hand - ecosystems are be

I realise now we're talking at cross-purposes. I'm not talking about population growth, which is not really relevant to the problems at hand - ecosystems are being crashed in regions without increasing populations. Population increase is an orthogonal, and largely solved, issue. Population control (from infanticide, to surgical, to herbal and chemical) has been the human norm for many thousands of years in many populations. What's distinctive about capitalism, and what makes it a physically impossible system to maintain long-term, is its central conception of economic (ie. fake) "growth". Capitalism collapses without it, yet 'it' (described as a physical system) just is the dismantling of ecosystems. Any political economy might cause ecosystem damage; capitalism must, always. To put it in the strongest possible way: a population of capitalists fixed as a steady-state population of 1,000, would eventually (perhaps in a few millennia) destroy all ecosystems on the planet. Economic "growth" (ie. the conversion of complex evolved circular living systems into simple input-demanding technological non-living ones) leads there, ineluctably. > I really doubt that’s something people want to return to. Political punditry again. None of what I'm suggesting has anything to do with what anyone 'wants'. It's what's physically possible. Capitalism is incompatible with the long-term health of ecosystems (because its 'growth' is identical with their dismantling). Capitalism is an activity of humans. Humans are mammals, which depend on healthy ecosystems. Therefore capitalism will not continue (regardless of what anyone thinks they 'want'). > the evidence is rather strong that we are wired to reproduce as much as possible through natural selection Yet population control is one of the great human universals, and is chosen by many, perhaps most, populations when the option is there (and remember, what removes the option is generally culture, or lack of communal provision for old age). > we are wired to seek high social status This may be true (though the evidence is nowhere near sufficient to merit a bluff term like 'wired'). But what confers social status is utterly cultural and plastic. Social status can be conferred by age, or cattle, or kindness, or kids, or palaces, or wisdom, or beauty, or emotional continence, or the gift of the gab (and has taken all of these forms, in real societies). It has no inherent nature. Thinking of human nature is fixed to what we know of our local culture is a strong feature of those in empires, because they become so insulated from the huge range of real human variations that have existed.