The system is called reality.

The problem we face is that there is unlimited desires, but limited resources. That problem was written into the laws of the universe when the big bang occurred and a finite amount of energy produced a finite amount of matter.

Before a single homonid existed on earth, there was a limited amount of material on earth, a limited amount of energy available, a limited amount of space. Before a single homonid existed on earth, animals required food, shelter, heat, cool, and clean water.

The Oxygen Catastrophe is an amazing extinction event where most life on earth was photosynthesizing CO2, and in spite of the early earth having about 20 atmospheres worth of CO2 the Earth effectively ran out and afterwards the atmosphere was composed of mostly nitrogen and oxygen. Amazing to think that there was a resource that abundant, that was effectively completely used up by life, before multi-cellular life even began in earnest.

That extinction event killed almost all life on Earth, and ushered in an ice age that killed even more. That’s life, and it isn’t fair. Much of the life that remained had to adapt. Much life adapted to utilize this new oxygen waste. You and I utilize that waste material. Some photosynthesizers still exist, adapted to high levels of oxygen and low levels of CO2. Today, we live in a world that cycles between O2 and CO2, that’s the only way we can survive.

In about 250 million years, continental drift will form a new supercontinent, which will likely destroy most life on Earth. In about 750 million years, the luminosity of the dying sun will rise to the point that life on Earth will no longer be able to exist. A few billion years after that, the sun will run out of material, and will stop altogether. The solar system will slowly freeze for countless aeons. No life will survive that long. This is the end point of our reality.

Systems that pretend reality doesn’t exist, that this isn’t the end point of everything, they’re doomed because magic isn’t real and every decision is a trade-off between multiple competing and true things.

99.95% of life on Earth died in the oxygen catastrophe. 350 Wendy’s stores might close, laying off all their employees. Unlike the life that died in the oxygen catastrophe, the employees of those 350 Wendy’s can get new jobs, the real estate can be repurposed for new businesses that might not fail, and even capital equipment like ovens or deep fryers can be reused.

Central planners like to pretend they can prevent catastrophe, but all it does is change the terms of disaster. Instead of “Which locations objectively sell enough product to justify their existence”, often it becomes a war of nepotism, favoritism, lobbyists, and political favors. You can ask the empires of the Bronze Age Collapse how that worked out for them, but you can’t because of them, only the ancient Egyptians survived, every civilization of the middle east fell. Some fell and were erased from history altogether by people who wanted to forget the horrors of for example the Minoans. New civilizations rose eventually in the same regions, but new ones that did things differently. Eventually, even the Egyptians fell to the Greeks under Alexander.

Life requires suffering and limitation. Life requires constant adaption. Life requires successfully dealing with reality. Anyone who tells you differently, they’re not telling you the truth, and any system that suggests you can avoid these truths will aways fail against systems that model reality more correctly.

The positive thing is that a system like capitalism when it’s working correctly (I’m not saying it does always, I’m not a modernist who believes you can fit everything in the world in one box) means that the Wendy’s employees don’t die, they just have to find new jobs, and perhaps that building will be bought by a new company that does things differently, or sells something different, and is more likely to provide enough useful goods or services that it can support itself. If it does, then instead of the result being a net human suffering, it’ll be a net human positive. Perhaps that neighborhood actually needed a local restaurant in that spot. Perhaps it actually needed a book store. People who have an idea can take a risk and give it a shot, and maybe it survives and thrives, maybe it fails too and the cycle starts again.