This resource is a wikidebate, a collaborative effort to gather and organize all arguments on a given issue. It is a tool of argument analysis or pro-and-con analysis. This is not a place to defend your preferred points of view, but original arguments are allowed and welcome. See the Wikidebate guidelines for more.
Subject classification: this is an economics resource.
Capitalism is the predominant economic system of our time. But can it remain so? Systems like mercantilism and serfdom lasted for centuries before the establishment of the Bretton Woods system. Have we reached what political theorist Francis Fukuyama has called the "end of history" where liberal democracy matched with free markets are the last viable option for organizing society? If capitalism is to be overthrown, what could replace it and would it be a step forward or back? Sustainable here does not only mean ecologically, but over time.
Capitalism is sustainable
Arguments for
Pro Throughout recent history, there has not been a better and viable alternative system to capitalism.
Objection This doesn't imply that capitalism is sustainable.
Objection An alternative will surface as soon as it becomes necessary. Unenvisioned alternatives have greater plausibility of surfacing with the access to technologies, scientific abilities, tools and processes which didn't exist in former eras.
Objection Relying on as-yet unenvisioned alternatives is pure speculation.
Objection Nevertheless, the lack of alternatives being discussed doesn't establish capitalism as being "sustainable"
Objection Feudalism is a viable alternative, viable in the sense of capable of sustained existence. That does not make it the preferable or sustainable alternative, merely viable. Ditto North Korean Communism.
Pro Although Marx predicted that capitalism is a necessary stage for an eventual worker's revolution, capitalists after Marx have been able to slowly adjust capitalism so that it can sustain itself indefinitely. The shifts from the Industrial Revolution to globalized financial capitalism have made it impossible for workers to ever overthrow the upper class.
Objection This argument assumes what must be proven. The fact that capitalism has been slowly adjusting to sustain itself doesn't mean that it will continue to be able to do so. Economists will try, no doubt.
Pro Economic growth under capitalism can be separated from unsustainable resource consumption. There is not a fixed supply of resources that is used up, because new resources can be discovered or developed. In other words, advancing technology enables us to access resources which were formerly unreachable.
Objection That so-called 'decoupling' is possible does not mean it's actually done and neither that it can be done quickly enough or to a sufficient degree. Decoupling is limited in its potential and occurring far too slowly.[1] It needs some kind of socioeconomic transition to a sustainable economic system.
Objection There is a fixed supply of natural resources to be used up, such as rare minerals and fossil fuels. Discovery of new resources does not create them, merely discovers them, and the total available amount is fixed. What is used up is gone. As far as we know, the current rate of resource exhaustion cannot be sustained for the next 500 years, whether under capitalism or socialism.
Objection While new resources can be used, existing market forces can downplay innovation due to the risk of investing in new products. For example, if an innovation results in reduced demand (although specific to markets), those whose business depends on selling said product have an incentive to control the impacts of such innovation. This could result in the adoption or suppression of such innovation, as we've seen with the fossil fuels industry. This also applies to overconsumption (if, say, Americans reduced their car use by half without seriously affecting their happiness (maybe increasing it), it'd probably be great for the environment and sustainability, but terrible for fossil-fuel and automobile companies).
Arguments against
Con Capitalism requires constant growth, and constant growth is impossible in a limited planet.
Objection The assumption that capitalism requires constant growth is dubious. Empirical evidence suggests that capitalist economies do not require endless growth but are rather much more likely to evolve toward a steady state once consumption demands of the global population have been satisfied.[2]
Objection There is no empirical evidence that shows this. Basically, all countries strive for growth as a de-facto goal and are pressured to have that goal, growth in terms of GDP growth and population growth and growth of resource extraction is what's happening on the global level consistently throughout, and endless growth is the built-in goal that the system pressures its components to strive for which is very difficult to ignore. For example, consumption demands are aimed to be maximized where in the systemic ideal, everybody wants to have a large house, two cars, eat lots of meat, replace products quickly, book a lot of airplanes, buy a lot of products, etc etc.
Objection The empirical evidence for that can be found if we look at the two metrics presented above: GDP growth and population growth. In terms of real GDP growth, the average rate among advanced economies is 1.5, whereas the same number is at 4.0 for developing economies. So with time we can clearly see a trend towards a steady state. In terms of population growth, we see a similar picture. In high-income countries with advanced economies, the average fertility rate is 1.5 births per woman, whereas in low-income countries with developing economies the average fertility rate is 4.5 births per woman.
Objection The Earth is not the limit. Other planets are relatively benign compared to Earth, with no ecosystems to protect, and there are also space habitats.
Objection Massive space colonization is unfeasible in the near future. We need a solution sooner.
Objection It was never stated that we needed a fast solution.
Objection If we cannot manage in this planet, how can we even hope to manage others much more hostile?
Objection Feasible planets to live in, whether hostile or not, are merely fictional, as the ones we may find, will require energy to make habitable for humans, and quite probably, as our knowledge of existing planets suggests, unimaginable amounts of energy. This argument reduces to a low probability high risk endeavor with many ifs, if we find a planet, if we we are technologically developed enough, etc. which proves the point of capitalism not being sustainable in the first place.
Objection Even assuming constant growth is required to sustain capitalism, this is constant economic growth, which is not equivalent to a constant increase in resource consumption. Economic growth based on intellectual property and more efficient use of existing resources (asymptotically approaching perfect efficiency) can be maintained in a finite system.
Objection Economic growth based on intellectual property still requires resources: people eating, using computers, servers running, etc. Capitalism prioritizes growth of only capital, it establishes an asymmetric relation that benefits a few, immensely more than the remaining majority. In it's "pure" ideological form capitalism completely disregards the natural environment, even paints it as an obstacle or enemy, in the name of individual or market "freedom".
Objection "intellectual property" is arguably an impediment to innovation.
Con Capitalism disregards the natural environment over capital growth. The universe does not care though, it just reflects back, therefore becoming a recipe for destruction to the ones using it as their ultimate rule.
Objection Capital growth and natural environment don't need to be two mutually exclusive things. As green energy becomes more affordable, the market incentivizes the transition towards renewables. As of 2025, for example, around 90% of renewables are cheaper than fossil fuels.[3][4]. According to S&P Global's cleantech trends outlook, in 2025 clean energy technology investments will surpass upstream oil and gas spending for the first time in history.[5]
Objection This is changing despite of capitalism not because or naturally in it. Moreover and importantly, it's changing too slowly and with a lot of resistance or issues and many non-built-in interventions being required. The problem remains also when it comes to energy overspecifically but sustainability isn't just about energy.
Objection The examples that I mentioned above do seem to be caused by capitalism at least to some degree. As renewable sources become more cost-effective than their fossil fuel counterparts, the market incentivizes a transition to them. This is especially true now that we are seeing business leaders (who are famous for caring about themselves first and foremost) overwhelmingly back the transition to renewables.[6] Additionally, energy and energy-related sectors are by far the biggest contributors to carbon dioxide and greenhouse gas (methane, nitrous oxide, etc) emissions.[7]
Objection Neither the achievement of their higher cost-effectiveness nor systematic incentivization of cost-effectiveness in this domain are tied to exclusively capitalism. Moreover, the transition again was and is far too slow, proving how capitalism hasn't and doesn't deal with this problem well which isn't limited the energy production to begin with and climate change not the only environmental problem. That there are some systemic characteristics that can and to some extent address issues related to the natural environment doesn't mean it doesn't disregard the natural environment substantially or too much.
Objection The examples provided above are connected to capitalism, if not exclusively, then at least to some degree. They don't need to be caused 100% by capitalism to count as something good that capitalism did. Otherwise, if we raise our standard of attribution to "exclusively" causing something, then we won't be able to attribute anything to anything else, because in real life it is rare that something exclusively, fully, 100% causes something else. As to the point about the transition being too slow, in 2024, more than 40 percent of the world's electricity was generated without burning fossil fuels.[8] This number would be almost unfathomable in prior decades.
Objection What was meant is that for example systematic incentivization of cost-effectiveness in this domain can't only be achieved in/with capitalism. This number wasn't almost unfathomable in prior decades – quite a few people called for a change like that or more back then, not now after CO2 has been increased already very much. 40% of the world's electricity being generated without burning fossil fuels is not much: the share of electricity in final energy consumption is just 20% in 2023.[9] Moreover, percentages and numbers don't matter at all and neither whether they feel impressive – what matters is whether a good target is reached in terms of risk management and natural physics and all attempts for such – organized and incentivized not by the capitalism system but inorganically by roughly politics – are so far failing disastrously, with even the upper target of 2 °C warming now already starting to seem out of reach and clearly not what the world is currently headed for even if the U.S. didn't elect Donald Trump as president and with lots of optimistic assumptions like pledges being adhered to.[10][11][12][13] And climate change is still just one of many problems.
Objection The number is unfathomable not because people didn't call for action that would lead for it (people call for flying cars as well, but if we saw them suddenly suddenly become viable on a massive scale we'd all be pretty shocked), but because we are actually living in a world where they exist this early, which would greatly surprise people from previous decades. Climate Action Tracker estimates that just by adhering to all targets that were already announced, we would stay below 2°C (at 1.9°C to be precise). Previously, some scientists said that exceeding 5°C warming could very well be possible – now that's essentially ruled out. Now, even if all progress abruptly stopped and we just did what we are doing now (which is very unrealistic, because so far the progress has been very constant), we would likely stay below 2.8°C according to Climate Action Tracker.
Objection Again, numbers and how impressed some people may be in some views is ultimately totally unimportant overall and in regards to the debate question. What matters is physics and risk management in the sense of whether it's enough / fast enough, or the ultimate outcome. CAT[14] says 2.8 °C and 1.9 °C is just relating to public talks about targets but nothing tangible and even there assumes full implementation of all such targets which entities aren't even on track for. Their actual projection is 2.2-3.4°C and even that makes lots of optimistic assumptions. And this is far too slow or too high of a temperature and 5 °C warming is still very well possible due to tipping points in the climate system and the associated risk of runaway climate change which all such projections may distract from, giving a false sense of quantifyability and security, and a reason why 1.5 °C is the only sane goal, not 2 °C.
Objection The 2.2-3.4°C figure is their maximal range of temperatures if no other policies are implement beyond those that are there right now. This is essentially their worst case scenario, not their prediction, and even in this scenario they still put the median at 2.7°C. In 2024 survey among leading IPCC authors only about 6% predicted warming rising above 3.5°C, with only around 1% predicting it to reach 5°C. So even though the scenario might be physically possible, it is essentially ruled out as being very likely by the scientific community.
Objection Again, 2.2-3.4°C warming is really bad, called for example a "death sentence"[15] or "woefully inadequate",[16] also by many studies. It is very plausible that policies are weakened (or undone or ignored), for example in the U.S. with the Trump as president, or that some are not as effective as projected or some climate impacts worse than currently thought (as still often the case according to recent studies). Importantly, the percentage of IPCC authors projecting a warming over a certain degrees is nothing short of a ridiculously bad way to assess the risk of a >3.5°C warming – a minimum reasonable way arguably would be to have climate science scientist experts assess the relative likelihood of that along with confidence ratings for their warming assessments and then combine that data into an accurate conclusion/summary. It is not ruled out in the slightest, quite the opposite, and not being very likely is clearly not sufficient. Lastly, impacts from 2°C warming are likely pretty bad enough already if that goal was achieved at all so this wouldn't be much of a success either anyway, with capitalism arguably failing in this domain also if that goal would be achieved (with there likely being noncommunist noncapitalist nonprimitivist alternative systems that would do much better and e.g. would never have caused such a fast warming or achieve implementation of a ≤1.5°C warming limit).
Objection We do have just such a study that utilizes confidence ranges and employs a methodology that could be used to form, say, Bayesian prior distribution of future temperatures.[17] In it, the authors did a very extensive analysis and the conclusion that they reached is that even under the pessimistic estimate, warming that exceeds 5°C is very unlikely. So whether you prefer a survey of leading IPCC authors or an analysis based on confidence ratings, both agree on their conclusion regarding the 5°C scenario. The same analysis also estimates that under a median scenario, there are decent odds of staying below 2°C. Your last point is about whether impacts even from 2°C warming are bad enough. Let's be generous and assume that warming exceeds 3°C. According to a recent analysis (Oxley & Ng 2023), even under such scenario, the analysis find that the global GDP will still nearly double just by 2050 (much less 2100). The country that will be hit hardest would be Indonesia, but even so, it is still predicted to make it into top-ten economies of the world. Next, let's look at population. According to ND-GAIN country index, population in countries most threatened by climate change is expected to drastically increase. So what we can see is that even under some pretty bad climate change scenarios, both the population and GDP of even the most threatened countries are expected to increase. So it seems hard to say that capitalism is failing in this domain.
Objection Many scientists keep warning of great danger and concern about the current trajectory of global warming which is just one of many environmental problems. For example, in 2025 a joint statement by large relevant-expertise-scientist organizations Deutsche Meteorologische Gesellschaft e. V. (DMG) and Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft e. V. (DPG) warned 3 °C warming could be reached by 2050[18] when the world and a reasonable approach that would still be overtly risky would be to limit global warming to 1.5 °C by 2100. The UN is also warning of 3.1 C warming.[19] And various climate tipping points seem to be closed to irreversible tipping over where for example the world's coral reefs are as of 2025 in an almost irreversible die-off.[20] Anybody who is genuinely thinking the current trajectory is a success or close to being sufficient is fooling themselves.
Objection Because of the lack of proper citations, i.e. hyperlinks, it's unclear what is meant with "Oxley & Ng 2023". It can't be found and may be some AI hallucination. If it does exist, it may merely be an unreviewed unscientific report. Moreover, GDP is pretty meaningless. What matters is human lives (not) lost (and lifespan) and human well-being, including sustainability of the ecological life-support systems etc. GDP also increases by deforesting the Amazon, a climate tipping point, for unhealthy red meat that are traded for other virtual numbers. There is no reference for the claims about Indonesia and the rank in the world's economies according to GDP is yet another virtual rather meaningless number. If the population in countries most impacted by climate change are expected to drastically increase that makes the impacts all the much worse since more people will be affected by it and as already described in various studies.[21] Capitalism absolutely is failing in this domain or has failed already given the impacts already in the present and the near-impossibility of safely reliably reaching 1.5°C today.
Objection The article is called "Quantifying the economic hit from climate change". If you say that GDP is meaningless, but that human well-being is not meaningless, then it should be noted that GDP is an indicator of factors that are related with improved well-being. This is not to say that GDP directly causes improved well-being, but rather that icreases in GDP are correlated with increases in factors that are themselves correlated with increases in quality of life. If you want to make a case for capitalism's being unsustainable based on the fact that humans in the future will have low well-being, then you will still need some metric to extrapolate into the future to reach that conclusion. The claims about Indonesia come from the the very same source that mentioned economic impacts under 3°C warming. The reason I brought up the population in the most affected countries is to show that under some rather bad scenarios (like 3°C), their population is still going to increase, so it's not like those countries would literally all die out or collapse.
Objection The now-cited article[22] is merely an unreviewed unscientific report by Capital Economics and not even available without payment. It's not reliable and should be dismissed in such considerations and debates. Of actual scientific research, one study found of a set of papers the most recent of these papers find impacts of climate change on global GDP around 20 percent by end of the century[23] and a big 2024 paper reported on widely and published in Nature that uses recent empirical findings from more than 1,600 regions worldwide over the past 40 years finds that the world economy is committed to an income reduction of 19% within the next 26 years.[24]
Objection That is fair, an article being behind the paywall, perhaps, makes it less likely to be conclusive evidence, because you can't review it (I have access to it, but if you don't, then fair enough). I found a different (publicly-available) study, this time made by National Bureau of Economic Research.[25] Here, based on a review of studies that estimate the global economic impacts of climate change using a systematic research synthesis, they estimate the income reduction to be only 1.63% under a 3°C scenario. Even under a 6°C scenario, they predict the income reduction to sum up to just 6.53%.
Objection The literature review study is not using expert assessments like that but it does consider or integrate studies that do so, particularly Ho et al. (2019) which found a median estimate of roughly RCP6.0 which equates to 3-4 °C warming by 2100, which the review also assesses to have a high likelihood in the central scenario albeit much lower than around 2°C. A key issue is that if Earth warms that much (3-4°C), certain irreversible cascading chains of reciprocal warming could be triggered with a quite high likelihood so that by 2100 or by 2200 Earth has warmed by 5°C or more. The 5°C number (or the quantified risk thereof) is a bad pick anyway as the impacts from 2°C and 3°C are projected to be quite disastrous already anyway.
Objection The original study that I presented also deals with RCPs. It mentions in the "Scenarios beyond 3°C" section that the scenarios RCP6.0, RCP7.0 and RCP8.5 are unlikely (95th percentile).
Con It does not make sense to call capitalism "unsustainable". Capitalism is unsustainable because nothing is. Every thing we consider "sustainable" today likely won't survive even 10 Ga, and should be treated as temporary as capitalism, if not more so, to bootstrap better tech.
ObjectionIn 10 Ga the Earth won't even be there anymore as it will most likely be absorbed by the Sun in around 7.5 Ga. Sustainability is a term referring to sustainability of certain type, such as for a specific scale of time and at environmental conditions not extremely different from those projected for the future and, as here, often used in the context of specifically human civilization. Many things would be more sustainable than current systems and practices such as harvesting energy via recyclable solar panels for public transport that doesn't degrade environmental conditions much instead of extracting scarce fossil fuels for private transport that are a main cause of climate change.
Con Capitalism is "fast, decentralised, and ruthlessly efficient at reallocating resources" where innovation never stops and creative destruction omnipresent where "No one manages this process" — "it happens spontaneously, driven by billions of self-interested decisions". All of this is not only beneficial but also in conflict with the natural world of Earth, which has rules of energy balance, symbiosis, biodiversity etc that "serve a critical purpose, to ensure that life as a whole is sustained". The goal isn't to meet human needs in the short and long run – it's to maximize output, consumption, and wealth creation in terms of a specific system of virtual numbers.[26]
Objection First off, yes, capitalism is driven by self-interest and competition. The same thing that you're criticizing creates incentives to solve problems as well, though. Companies are pouring billions into renewable energy right now not because they suddenly became tree huggers, but because they see where the market is heading. Solar and wind are often cheaper than fossil fuels now. Second, you say the goal is just maximizing output and wealth in terms of virtual numbers. But those numbers represent real things that real people need. Capitalism has lifted millions (if not billions) out of poverty. Life expectancy has doubled in the last century. Child mortality has plummeted. And we managed all of this while the global population exploded. If we want to talk about sustainability, we have to account for the fact that we're supporting far more people at far higher living standards than ever before in human history.
Objection That this is creating incentives to solve some problems is already in the argument itself and doesn't need to be addressed again. The renewable energy transition is too slow and even now new fossil fuel projects get launched. Moreover, climate change is not the only environmental problem. That those numbers also represent real things people need isn't negated either – it just says the goal is to maximize those numbers and that doesn't are tied to people's well-being, where increasing or maximizing them often comes at the expense of people's well-being and sometimes their lives. Lastly, tremendous progress under capitalism is also not negated – this is largely due to advancement of science, technology, and legal and political systems but even when attributing it to capitalism, it doesn't say much about whether things are sustainable. For example, things can also be unsustainable even if all people's well-being and health are maximized in the present. The question is whether the system is sustainable and it isn't.
Con Within capitalism, genuine education and major interest of people – including events, volunteering, competition, and hobbies – and the media into big problems and in specific how they could effectively sufficiently be solved is lacking. This is largely because the education system is not only antique but also oriented toward economic benefit within the context of capitalism in specific and the media industry driven by people's mundane nonintellectual interests and profit. For example, there is essentially no film or series about a world with a sustainable economic system and how humanity got there and how it works and neither is there extensive education on environmental problems and what people can do in their lives in practice to mitigate them such as working on the subject – even if there are no jobs for that as often the case – or by knowing how to cook healthy tasty food without meat or by normalized and informed avoidance of private car use.
Objection You're saying education and media don't focus enough on sustainability, but that's not a flaw of capitalism itself. It's more about how society chooses to use the system. Capitalism adapts to what people want. If people want events, volunteering, competition, and hobbies as you say, then markets will incentivize exactly that (due to supply and demand laws). For example, look at the growth of environmental education in schools now, or the popularity of documentaries like "An Inconvenient Truth" that reached millions because the market allowed it. Plus, media companies are making more content about sustainable living as demand increases, like shows on renewable energy or zero-waste lifestyles. In terms of practical solutions, electric cars from companies like Tesla became mainstream because of supply and demand. Plant-based food options are everywhere now because businesses saw a market for them. Education is evolving too. STEM and environmental science is often funded by private investments, especially now, when going green can actually be more profitable than not doing so.
Objection * The system can only be adjusted or adapt in certain ways to certain degrees via certain pathways when constraining things to the current capitalist system. * The argument was misunderstood in that this is not about "events, volunteering, competition, and hobbies" but about making these to a large extent about real-world problems such as environmental functioning/health. * Environmental education at schools is minimal and not built in ways that make it truly useful or impactful. * Widely used individual motorized transport and the associated infrastructure focus is unsustainable even if the motor is electric due to the low efficiency and high electricity consumption. * Plant-based food options are easy to cook, cheap and tasty but often hard to find in cities across the world and especially in schools and other places where one would expect menus to change and to be easier to change. As of 2023, a typical university procures, directly or indirectly, several tons of animal products every month, and advertises these products to thousands of people every day.[27] * The dietary shift is also far too slow and/or limited. * Not much has changed about education even in European countries like France, Germany and Spain – it's still mostly subjects of no real-world use and quickly forgot learned via outdated methods like manually copying blackboards and then memorizing things while there is no education on healthy diet, Web searching, making effective personal sustainability changes, or making a positive change. Even in universities worldwide, curricula still focus on fossil fuels rather than renewables and one would think that had long changed.[28] * That STEM and environmental science is often funded by or dependent on private investments just means the solutions will be very limited. In fact, most of it is rather wasted on further researching physical science when the difficult and important problem now is how to mitigate climate change in the real world. See image on the right for an indication of a severe neglection of policy studies and similar social sciences. * That such science is funded doesn't say whether or not it's an sufficient amount. Going green is usually not more profitable than not doing so – for example it's not profitable to a car company like Tesla or BMW to stop selling cars or for farmers at the Amazon rainforest to stop selling beef (just like it's not in the interest of fast food chains to stop selling tasty unhealthy products or of an alcohol industry for people to reduce their alcohol consumption).
Con Capitalism often rapidly expands suboptimal solutions in terms of sustainability and puts them at an advantage. For example, in essentially all countries, private cars and private car infrastructure is more prevalent than public transport and bicycle infrastructure. Such solutions often get a comparative advantage and are proactively marketed to people where the system is shaped so as that people are facilitated or even need to advertise such products and try to get more people to want and buy them.
Objection Okay, but the fact that private cars became dominant doesn't mean capitalism can't shift towards better options. Look at how electric vehicles are taking off now because consumers and regulations are pushing for cleaner transport. Companies like Tesla created whole new markets that didn't exist before just off of that. Also, public transport and bike infrastructure are growing in many cities. That's because the market incentivizes that. Businesses see value in projects revolving around going (more) green, and local governments can partner with private companies to fund these projects. The system is changing its course because it has to, and because there's money to be made in doing so. And with each year there is more and more money to be had there. So companies who don't go green will feel increasing financial pressure on them with each passing week/month.
Objection Electric cars are cars. Public transport and bike infrastructure may be growing but the question would be how much they grow relative to 1. the population increase, 2. the wealth or public spending increase and 3. other transport infrastructure. The market doesn't incentivize bike infrastructure at all or not much. And these things are not happening because the market incentivizes it. When a current pushes you toward a cliff at 2 km/h but you manage to swim 1 km/h into the other direction, one shouldn't focus on the great success of swimming in the right direction but on that it not being enough. Not being enough here means not just too little but also certain limitation of things that are being done or done at a big scale.
Pro Throughout recent history, there has not been a better and viable alternative system to capitalism.
Objection This doesn't imply that capitalism is sustainable.
Con Capitalism requires constant growth, and constant growth is impossible in a limited planet.
