As an analogy, you can pump the yield of your crop fields by 50% if you are willing to deplete the soil and cash in on 100 years of careful building of the topsoil layer. The person doing it wins out in the short term 10 years, but society loses out long-term when they gotta spend another 100 years of much lower yields to build the top soil back up to healthy levels. Meanwhile the 10 year guy already made his money and sold off whats dregs are left to seek the next snatch and grab operation.