I'm not saying that I wish that it were true, or that I think it's a good thing. I agree that it's daft. But over the short term, pillaging societies appear to

I'm not saying that I wish that it were true, or that I think it's a good thing. I agree that it's daft. But over the short term, pillaging societies appear to beat conserving ones. And it's a fact that we do seem to be (as a species) adopting a short-term-profitable long-term-suicidal approach. (An interesting model is Norway's oil – they're maximising in the sense of getting all the oil out from under the sea, but they're stashing most of the profits away as a rainy-day fund, which puts the country on very secure footing for about the next hundred years or so. You might call that 'maximising without consuming', or 'camping'.) I think the future of the human race depends on finding a better answer to this whole question, but I think accepting that pillagers beat conservers in a lot of cases is a necessary step to finding something better. (I don't think we actually disagree; we seem to be arguing different points.)