There was a time when the advocates of socialism argued that it would lead man to material abundance, whereas free-market capitalism would lead only to increasing misery and would ultimately collapse under its own internal stresses. You don't hear that too much these days, and for good reason. A century of empirical evidence has shown the contrary — that the free market leads to increasing wealth and material freedom, while socialism leads us only to poverty, state supremacy, and ultimately, mass murder.
These days the attack has shifted. Capitalism does not lead us to poverty; it leads us to too much wealth. This makes us "greedy" and "materialistic." It leads us to excessive "consumerism."
- Ben O'Neill in his article "Does Capitalism Make Us More Materialistic?" Quote and cartoon from http://www.mises.org/story/2697
Excessive consumerism means wastage. Companies need to sell as much as possible. Stakeholders want to profit to the maximum. Citizens want to live with all the material goods.
Every year, you read about extraordinary profits by big corporations. More profits, more projects. More projects, more development. More development, more land needed... and so more trees cut, more pollution, more floodings and eventually disaster after disaster. Corporations rarely think about environment. They think about profit. They want more. They will do whatever necessary even to the extend of destroying nature for an extra dollar.
Do we need Capitalism in this fragile environment?
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