Economies and the collapse of civilization

Over the history of the Earth, there have been many great civilizations.  Many of these great civilizations like the Romans, Mayans, and Mesopotamians, grew to greatness and then crumbled.  There are many theories as to why, but none of them are really satisfying.  I'll put forth my own unsatisfying theory here:

Capitalistic economies will eventually cause all civilizations who partake in them to fail.
This is true for these ancient civilizations where their currencies and economies were fairly isolated, but also true for today's world where the economy consists of the entire world.  The reason for this is that the way capitalism is setup, the system must grow in order for institutions or individuals to make money.  If the economy becomes stagnant, then the economy fails.  I'm not sure I understand this completely, but it does seem to hold across different times and cultures who have some sort capitalistic economy.  Economies can't
possibly grow indefinitely.  In modern times we have become creative and have used technology to increase output.  We've created fancy financial packages that somehow generate revenue from nothing.  It's great, and it's fun and profitable while growing, but what happens when there is no more growth to be had, or people are getting too creative with their financial instruments.

Our world is now seeing signs of problems to come.  These days, instead of hitting the peak of our growth and crashing, our governments are artificially propping up, or applying cpr to the economy.  How can borrowing billions of dollars and spending them on questionable projects across the country be a good idea?  The fixes for our current problems are a boom in population, or a real crash.  Let the big banks fail.  Let Greece go under.  Once we work through the really tough times following that, the economy will pick up again and find a way to grow.  Otherwise, we're just delaying the inevitable.

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