There's no way to know, unless someone's got a time machine. In which case, can I borrow it? I just want to go back to last Wednesday with the winning lotto numbers.

The truth is that laissez-faire capitalism is a genuine improvement over what came before. It spurs greater productivity and accelerates the creation and capture of wealth. All that extra wealth makes more things possible, things like landing on the moon. But simply because it is better than the previous mercantilism, that does not mean it's perfect, or any more sustainable. In fact, one could argue that the more primitive feudalism is more sustainable than capitalism, as it sustained itself without serious economic collapse far longer than laissez-faire capitalism managed to. It took less than 50 years before the Great Depression hit, and while Americans like to think it was a uniquely American phenomenon, it hit Europe, and in particular Germany, much much harder. In my opinion, it was one of the primary causes of WWII. And it took less than 50 years before inflation and inequality threatened to take down the economy again, in the 70's. What redistribution mechanisms that existed were insufficient to alleviate the problem, and the Republican solution was to expand the money supply. In our game, this would be analogous to letting consumers take two pebbles from the pot for every trade and letting producers take four. This can provide a short-term fix, but in the end, merely accelerated inflation and inequality.