(Umm.  Oh, yes:  Drug binges have delayed feedback, too.)  

The driving force is undamped POSITIVE feedback.  

If the 19th century was learning about the destabilizing effect of positive feed back, the 20th was about how external (political) attempts to apply appropriate negative feed back can be successful, but are readily subverted.  

So that the system, as a whole, is again unstable.  

Living systems seem to deal with this problem by increasing their complexity, and the extra layers of feedback yield increased resiliency.  

Capitalist political economies move the opposite way--toward simplified structures.  Capitalism does to the human environment what it does to the physical environment--desertifies it.  

The Fates are kind.