Economic systems, even if inefficient, and social systems are hard to change despite changing circumstances because they follow paths determined by earlier institutional choices. The initial choice of a particular technology, for example, "locks" an economy into a sequence of adaptive investments that block the later adoption of more efficient technologies.
As a result of path dependency, anyone who imagines that the global capitalist market system is somehow going to follow, through its own initiative, a qualitatively different path than that already traced, is seriously deluded and misguided.
The effects of a path continue to undermine its supportive base (both within society and the environment). They will as a result catastrophically self-correct unless a deliberate choice is made to modify the nature of economic growth towards sustainable development.