alt Hacker News> That means the modern society is not sustainable and cannot adapt to long-term changes.
Why? I, as the poster you replied to, do not see it this way at all. Any society, modern or not, can adapt to slow changes. And rapid changes would be at least as damaging several centuries ago, when for example 2-3 consecutive years of bad harvests meant a major upheaval.
Things can look a lot smoother after a few centuries. My 2c.
Things are toppled a lot higher now than several centuries ago. Population is orders of magnitude higher, and we all get our food from far away places in the world. Those things make a very fragile global ecosystem which is very different to the very localised ones centuries ago.
Back then 2-3 consecutive years of bad harvests meant a major upheaval for a few affected areas. Now that those areas supply food to the whole world the problem has grown in scale and fragility.