Answering genuine question about all the things that are going wrong in our society and economy with a glib "it's late-stage capitalism, what did you expect?" is like answering "why is this old man dying" with "he's old and unhealthy, what did you expect?"
You still want details. You still need to understand the hows and whys—the proximate and near proximate causes even if the ultimate cause is abundantly clear.
@baldur Exactly. Are we asking this question just to hear ourselves ask it? Or do we want to do something to, in any way, make the situation less terrible?
For our part, we want to try and solve or at least mitigate the issue, and trite responses that are, in as many words, "what do you expect" become less than useless in that goal.
@mousefriend @baldur
Yes, to put it in a different perspective, I've had people tell me that global warming is natural and not man-made.
My response is "Don't you still think it's a good idea to keep the planet habitable?"
I think the same response fits this question.
@gdinwiddie @baldur Hearing full grown adults, who have literally themselves lived through an observably warming local climate, ask this question makes us want to light them on fire just to see if they CAN recognise anthropogenic warming, or if their self denial is so deep that they'd insist being on fire was just a natural way some humans existed sometimes.