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The artificial hill of pottery shards is puny and localized; the consequences of our system will bring down the system in ways the system is completely blind to.
We're all familiar with the plot device of the self-destruct sequence counting down while our hero / heroine frantically tries to find the kill switch that turns it off. The system--however we choose to describe it--is self-destructing and there's no switch to turn it off.
We're drawn to the notion that cabals and conspiracies are the root source of the system's ills. If these cabals were exposed and disempowered, then the system would quickly right itself and all would be well again.
Cabals and conspiracies are not the source, they're a symptom of a deeper, structural self-destruct mechanism, a mechanism we take for granted as the way the world works.
Regardless of ideological label--capitalist, socialist, communist--all systems are markets of some kind with producers, sellers and buyers / consumers. The market may be more or less open, or more or less controlled by the state, warlords or cartels, but in all cases there are producers, sellers and consumers.
In all cases, neither the producer, the seller nor the consumer have any responsibility for the downstream consequences of what's produced, sold and purchased. Every participant is incentivized to maximize their self-interest without regard for the future consequences of this pursuit of self-interest.
The producer of the plastic bottle has no responsibility for what happens to the bottle after production, the seller has no responsibility for what happens to the bottle after it's sold, and the consumer who tosses it in the river after consuming the contents has no responsibility for what happens to the bottle once they're done consuming the product.
The market has no internal, intrinsic responsibility for the consequences of narrow self-interest nor any mechanism that looks beyond the present. The market is blind to future consequences, and imposes no responsibility to do so on any participant.
The only possible result of this system is self-destruction. Consider the Great Pacific Garbage Gyre, the poetic name for a floating mass of plastic and other waste generated by the "growth at any cost" global economy roughly the size of Texas. (See chart below.) This is not the only garbage patch in the planet's oceans; it's merely one of the biggest.