I have thought about that often. The conclusion I have reached is this Earth's way of keeping the population of a species at a natural state - droughts, plagues etc... At first this appears harsh based on our preconceived notions of humanity. Many people will die due the environmental conditions in which they live - regardless of pollution levels.
Earth does not have a bias towards one species, such as political/economic policies will have. Mother Nature's laws determine the strongest/fittest will survive, but our current system puts wealth that leads to power as the strongest.
Switching to a system which does not value materials, money and power over others but focuses strictly living off the land such as the African Tribe will result in a drastically different social construct than we see today.
Most able to adapt, most responsive to change. Not the strongest / fittest.
It's an extremely important distinction.
Wealth isn't the ultimate strength or source of power. It's #2 on the list behind political power, which is backed up by armies in most cases. Just ask rich people in authoritarian nations who is in charge (in recent times see: China, where rich people are routinely disappeared, or Russia where their wealthiest person was put in a gulag for opposing their dictator; all Russian oligarchs are universally terrified of said dictator).
Does anyone actually question whether Xi Jinping is weaker than Jack Ma? He could disappear Jack Ma tomorrow and nobody would do anything about it. Just look at what has been done to Wang Jianlin, his business is being diced up piece by piece by edict of the State (which arbitrarily cut off bank funding access for his business, forcing Wanda Group to being liquidating its holdings).
Was Sergey Brin more powerful than Barack Obama while Obama was president? The notion is laughable. Obama was not an especially rich man when he took over the Presidency, his power was entirely political in nature.
If you want a convenient example in the West, see what happened when tech companies ran up against the US military in the form of the NSA. They all lost universally across the board. All were forced to comply, or else. If the military didn't get what they wanted up front, they illegally circumvented the front door and tapped the link between data centers anyway. Qwest's CEO was put in prison when he attempted to disobey. Yahoo was threatened with vast fines [1] over trying to resist PRISM (they could trivially destroy any given tech company in this manner). It's clear who has the greatest position of power: the people with the stealth bombers, tanks and FISA court.
True and I agree, but you can't have political power without wealth. It is a catch-22 in my opinion, which came first the chicken or the egg type scenario.
Earth does not have a bias towards one species, such as political/economic policies will have. Mother Nature's laws determine the strongest/fittest will survive, but our current system puts wealth that leads to power as the strongest.
Switching to a system which does not value materials, money and power over others but focuses strictly living off the land such as the African Tribe will result in a drastically different social construct than we see today.