Adam Smith never foresaw this.

I'm beginning to see clear patterns of how capitalism's blind pursuit of profits is bringing about the decline of civilization. Here's a proof point in just one area of interest. But one that should greatly concern everyone who's ever visited a hospital or plans to in the future - antibiotics.
http://www.superbugtheblog.com/2010/05/incentives-for-making-new-antibiotics.html

As you might know, ALL antibiotics eventually lose their effectiveness against the bugs they were designed to kill because of the evolution of those bugs (interestingly a clear proof of evolution which I've never seen used against the ridiculous creationist arguments). As this article (and others I've read) states, the use of any new antibiotic can expect to evolve resistant bugs after about a year of use. Today, some strains of bacteria (bugs) are resistant to just about every antibiotic ever developed. What that means is that it's becoming more likely every year that if you enter a hospital for some invasive procedure and contract a bacterial infection, an antibiotic to kill-off that infection will not exist. i.e. you might survive the surgery but you will die from an infection. Or at least have a very nasty time trying to fight it off for many months or years before you eventually die. Exactly what happened before the discovery of sulfa drugs and penicillin almost a century ago.

From the article:
Imagine that you're a major pharmaceutical company, a public company, with shareholders that you answer to, and market analysts looking over your shoulder to see whether this quarter's earnings are up to projections. Imagine that you want to make a new drug. Let's make it an antibiotic, because new antibiotics that can leapfrog over existing drug resistance are very needed. Thus, you imagine, a new antibiotic ought to sell well, even though any individual course of that antibiotic will only be a few weeks by mouth, or maybe a few months by IV if the patient is very sick. You know there's a big market out there.

But: Imagine — as is generally accepted to be true — that it will take about 10 years, and about $1 billion dollars, to get that novel antibiotic through the development pipeline and into the marketplace. And then imagine that — as has been shown for a number of drugs, most recently the new antibiotic daptomycin — bacteria begin developing resistance to your drug within a year of its deployment in patients. And after that, imagine — as has been cited in a number of papers — that once local resistance to your antibiotic appears in approximately 20% of isolates, physicians will cease prescribing your antibiotic, for fear their patient will be one of that 20%.
So, to recap: 10 years, $1 billion; short course; short market life; rapid obsolescence.

Would you make that investment?

Apparently few if any big pharma companies ARE making that investment. And when viewed through the profit-maximizing lens of a public company, who could blame them? And yet, for our civilization to continue, we need new and more effective antibiotics every few years.

Is this how capitalism, with it's focus on only profits, will bring civilization to a sad ending?

I believe a similar sad ending could be described for every large industry.
Energy - producing so much carbon dioxide that we change the climate of the planet.

Retail - importing so many cheap products from low-labor nations that we destroy our local manufacturing base, putting millions of people out of work or forcing them to migrate to much lower paying 'service industry' jobs which serve the few people left with high-paying jobs (which have yet to be exported to low-labor countries).

Banking - offering so much cheap credit that their customers can't keep up with the payments, bringing about the collapse of their own companies, requiring a bail-out with the tax payments from those same customers who couldn't afford to make their monthly debt payments.

Medical - offering such expensive life-saving treatments that people must choose between a life of monster debt to pay medical bills, or death.

Food - producing food that is so unhealthy that it kills off their customers (makes you wonder if the food industry is in cahoots with the medical industry).

Hmmmmm. Makes me wonder what the role of government really is. Clearly we can't leave the continuation of civilization to the 'invisible hand of the market'.

Ironically, I can foresee the executives and large stock holders who reap the profits from those industries becoming the most angry about having to abandon their beach-front properties when the sea level rises, and most angry about their family members dying from incurable bacterial infections. Of course by then, it will be too late for their millions to make a difference.