Jeez, Arkadiy - you've experienced Two dystopias, within one lifetime! shouldn't you be a bit ahead of the curve? What's so difficult about this progression (?):

What's worth fighting / dying for?

How does (should?) a sentient homo-sap reconcile animal~instinctive urges with the desires of (cerebral) imagination? How does a dominant species ensure its / thus the Planet's / continued survival -- as the sole available Nest, (reachable via any means other than metaphysical abstraction, that is.)

I think anyone can construct her own utopian blueprint from those and only a few more.. Questions (already asked by Sages, early-on; merely refined across the centuries.) Rarely do we notice or utter Anything remotely-new IMhO.

Still, that which few of these psych (and psyche-) analyses ever folded into each's Rorschach shorthand, was -- any concept of "preserving the nest" -- in the largest sense, the whole Planet. That just wasn't in the <named-classes> from which each philosopher started writing code for utopias deemed worth trying for.

When the bellicose old world discovered All This 'Free' Real Estate, they instantly realized that their weapons-techno could easily dispatch its inhabitants; could (and did) also disregard / ridicule the attitude of the aborigines toward their World - this not-yet despoiled Brand New and Stealable 'Planet' (as filtered by those jaded, cynical, mercenary alien eyes -> homing in on.. GOLD! Natch.)

The aborigines' attitudes towards animals they ate, their reverence for The Land (The World) - exemplified by daily habits like,

..tread lightly across the land; leave it with no sign that a one had travelled through it..

These were concepts so alien to the Conquerors, those gonocidists-sans-'label' -- that their Only response was that of every ignorant and uncurious savage (as they liked to call anyone not-them): ridicule all which you fail to comprehend.

... We know the tedious, bloody, mercenary history since. Emulate the Euros, but fight harder for even More stuff.

Move on to '06 - and we can no longer escape facing Malthus re. our massive populations, and enhanced voraciousness. And all are forced, by the possibilities now seen (of a runaway people-assisted seppuku for many species) -- to also re-Ask the questions above; especially those re. our 'Economics'.

The goals of personal and unlimited accretion of hoarded resources/Power, as practised, refined, transformed into social Class all along - always ignored the Nest. No one (well, periodically - a few) Imagined! that we Could and-so-Would literally. Trash. the. Nest.

Now we do (imagine that, for Seeing processes, at varying stages.. which we now know how to extrapolate, however imprecisely.)

Think we can retain the same mindset which has defined social status, via those means which are precipitating disintegration - much longer?

My position on this question should be clear-enough for government work: No. We can't continue via this mindset -- perhaps may not wait even that proverbial 'generation' -- for some leisurely, comfortable awakening? / reassessment to dawn. Just maybe we can argue faster (I seriously doubt that. $$ Are the Universal 'God' for most, whom we've trained-up.)

New and credible data flows in daily, at accelerating rates.

Why.. it's even noted and considered! by the usual 1-2% (?) It's a start. But extrapolations are already more-than-'suggesting' that, even 20 years of inaction look to be scary for those plots at the knee going exponential: against that old Y=time axis. As to..

Your most fundamental misunderstanding of capitalism shows in your words "'we' never intended should have more than a token-Little". "We" intend for everybody to have precisely as much as he can pay for. And the crucial point is, the more people can pay for, the better. It's widely understood that selling more at lower prrice is better than selling less at higher price. That's how you grow a business, the corrupted exceptions norwithstanding.

We have a now lethally-familiar name for Unlimited Growth: cancer - a metaphor which overlays well on Unlimited Greed too, I wot. Redefining simply, "better = __?" - will be a large part of our reeducation, I also wot.

Your example-Title (Life/Bottom) illustrates well the 'unintended consequences' of this particular and perverse 'Econ'-guided dystopia. We have recently moved much of that famous Capital from low and middle-rank hands into the oligarchies which actually 'govern' - assuring that there will be 'More..' alright: More of the subjects in this study. (Does anyone Not-realize that 'Godzilla' is a metaphor - does one have to be Japanese to get it?)

Personally, I'd like to see some sign of somnolence being shaken off, well within that nom. 20 yr.? period, so I too might make an intelligent guess about this coin flip. 'Course I don't Need to know if/how/when we might actually kill off All and Everything -??- but, you know.. we're curious addlepated creatures.

Disintegration can be as interesting as integration, if a one is not identified with the outcome. But most of us do have a preference, don't we?

HTH

I Who Be