“I’d be happy to hear this from someone who’s publish some sort of substantial t

—“I’d be happy to hear this from someone who’s publish some sort of substantial treatise on our current predicament from both a first principles and systems theory perspective.”—
Hmm… we’re 800 pages in and only 3/4 of the way finished with the volume (Volume 1 – The crisis of the age).
The problem with your question is causal density on one hand (the total scope of collapse) of which we’ve documented something nearing 100 that are converging.
That said the underlying causes is human nature in the absence of sufficient legal boundaries to prevent the evasion of responsibility, degradation of transparency, and collapse of enforceability. And the underlying cause – the first principle – is the the vacillating equilibrium between the masculine reproductive strategy of capitalizing constraint and order(behavioral costs) necessary to produce the surplus that makes a prosperous civilization possible under the constrained vision of man, provokes the feminine reproductive strategy of hyperconsumption, presumption of the unconstrained vision of mankind, the cost evasion, and irresponsibility that lead to consumption of accumulated behavioral capital.
And this sinusoidal problem is endemic in history. And it begins with (a) academics, public intellectuals, and politicians, and spreads to (b) bureaucracy and the overproduction of parasitic pseudo-elites.
The only way to stop it of course is law and education, court and punishment. Even then it’s going to persist within tolerated limits.