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The haze in Singapore causes problems for the capitalist economic system. The forest fires in Indonesia cause the haze in Singapore. The forest fires in Indonesia are caused by the greed inherent in the capitalist economic system. So the capitalist economic system is inherently self-defeating.
Is this argument valid?
I think you're missing some premises.
That argument is valid. But I question its soundness. Someone else has also queried the truth of (1) and (2), but I'm also worried about (3). Maybe capitalism causes some problems and solves others and the magnitude of the solutions is greater than the magnitude of the new problems introduced. That would suggest that capitalism is limited in that it can't provide some solutions without introducing other problems, but not that it is utterly self-defeating.
The argumentation is a bit simple because none of these problems is monocausal.
But of course the capitalist system creates problems which affect the participants of the capitalist system and a lot of uninvolved people.
Well, I would argue you are 'picking' on capitalism. The more neutral axiom to argue is that 'Civilization' is a dying process of intelligent life. Under that proposition if you are able to escape earth bound institutional society humanity has as a slight chance to avoid the inevitable.
PS, it has never been (can not be) proven that Civilizations do not end, and never gracefully.
