[shadowmore]

I could see someone argue that, but would a monarch, for example, really hyperfocus nearly as much on optimizing crops to the point of driving the farmers to suicide, just so he could point to a line going up on a chart in a meeting with investors?

No, it's more likely to be a vague, emotional impulse for "more", without the bureaucratic apparatus to enforce it in a way that is fundamentally incompatible with human life.

Capitalism demands constant growth in ways and for reasons that are different from any other hierarchy.

[v_london]

This is literally what King Leopold II of Belgium did in Congo.