I get your point sixties, but we can hardly compare a 400mil investment with a sneaker shop.
P.S. that is not even remotely how extinction of a species takes place.
Erm, not that it's related to the OP but can you expand on that?
Sure, take dinosaurs for example, they were perfectly adapted to their surroundings, it was an unpredictable event which caused their extinction. These are things one can not plan for. Tigers for example too, perfectly adapted to their natural environment, over hunting is not something they can plan for or adapt to. These are unpredictable events out of their control. Unpredictable variables.
As a matter of fact, that is exactly what we could be avoiding. By upgrading at a smaller scale we are less prone to suffer the consequences of unpredictable events in the market or football world or at least minimize the negative effects.
99.9% of all species that have ever existed on Earth are extinct, focusing on a mass extinction event that killed the dinosaurs doesn't accurately represent causes for extinction for obvious reasons.
Tigers are becoming extinct because of three main reasons: habitat loss, poaching and population fragmentation. Two of those reasons are caused by man and so again Tiger extinction isn't an accurate representation.
I think you'll find the vast majority of extinctions are due to competition with other species, that is the struggle to survive in an enviorment with limited resources.
Tigers and Dinosaurs may very well have been perfectly adapted to their surroundings, but what you're failing to consider is the number of extinctions possibly caused by those species on other species that were not as perfectly adapted to their shared surroundings.
So to conclude, you're incorrect to suggest that sixties' extinction analogy was wrong.