Having conversations about such expansive topics like economics or philosophy is difficult to have over text. I generally don't like to get too far with them due to time cost and the ease of misinterpretting. 90% of conversation is body language, and sticking to text leaves us with an easy to misinterpret dialogue based on our existing emotions or poorly thought-out wording.
So, with that, my response:
I definitely do not have the experience needed to take my perspective all that seriously. I just enjoy reading, listening to new perspectives, and thinking about everything in my spare time. Take it with a pinch of salt and season your ideas wherever it may help.
Ironically, positive feedback loops can feed negative feedback loops and can put us in a hard position to maneuver. An example was given during an economist debate (I forget which). At the start, the economists asked the audience how many people would support affordable housing policies. The entire audience obviously raised their hands, who wouldn't wish to help people? Roughly 10 minutes later, after the conversation had moved well onto other things, the economists asked the audience if they would support policies that lowered the price of their homes but nobody raised their hands, missing the overall point. The audience wanted to have their cake and eat it too by arguing for more affordable housing without lowering the cost of housing.
"Betterment of the masses" is beyond idealistic: its insidious. The welfare of the people has always been the alibi of tyrants. If they, the ruling classes, could have the power to fundamentally alter humans to behave as their system demands, they would do it and justify the action into total delusion, believing they have saved everyone from themselves. They advertise mind reading earbuds, electroshock scarves, and ectolife baby factories as "betterment" because their idea of "better" is more productive and less self-interested population. This idea of "better" is clearly self-serving, whether they are concious to it or not.
_The square blocks need to fit in the circles, so cut the edges to make it more compliant and less painful to deal with._
"Tyrants are active and ardent and will devote themselves to any god, spiritual or otherwise, to put shackles on sleeping men" - Voltaire
As for feedback loops, I would agree they have been building in our societies for a little while. The consequences have been kicked down the road too long, and we are reaching the point where there are too many cans to keep kicking effectively. Our previous can kicking only made the next part of the feedback loop a little worse.
Some call it late stage capitalism, but I feel it's a few broader, more universal phenomena that no system can circumvent.
All systems are an attempt at creating an unchanging entity within a changing universe, making it quite bad at adapting to new circumstances or the consequences of its own behavior. No problem can be fixed with the ideas that created it.
If we take a somewhat more perspectivist approach, as you seem to allude to, we can say every good or bad depends on the position of observation. These systems only work for their creators and always fail as the next few generations desire different customs. All the good becomes the bad as the system now tries to prevent them from deviating too heavily. Balkanization inevitably occurs with enough people inside the system for a long enough time.
Systems or otherwise, the greatest strength happens to be the greatest weakness when viewed from a different position.
Plastic's most (and least) desirable trait is its ability to withstand structural breakdown. Specific horomones boost our performance while killing us. Like a candle, we burn bright or burn long.
The ability to hide from authorities protects both political dissidents and sociopathic degenerates.
Everything has pros/goods/benefits and cons/evils/detriments, but it's our focus that determines how we take things.
"There is no good or bad, but thinking makes it so" - Shakespeare, Hamlet
On that last part, I see it as a chicken and egg situation for now. Did the wasteful production of 'fluff' and 'junk' come before the desire to live as royalty, or was it the other way around? Maybe this environment came into existence to serve both the producers and consumers equally. The producers want more consistent income (deflationary currencies and maintainable products make consumer purchases inconsistent), and the consumers wanted things to be so cheap they lived in a luxury royalty of the past could only dream of. The producers oversupply with hard to maintain products, and both desires are satisfied.
That's not to say either of these desires is beneficial for the ecosystems around us, it's not yet.
Anyways, thanks for coming to my Ted talk. You are all now a little more stupid for having listened to it.