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A Brief History Of The Next 30 Years
Via Notes From Disgracedland’s Bjarne Knausgaard
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
(W.B. Yeats, The Second Coming)
Capitalism is disintegrating, but it is not giving way to a better alternative, it is
What a cheerful way to end the weekend. If I live to be 105, I may see us emerging into a nasty brave new age.
OTOH, there is no mention of the altered timing likely to be caused by nuclear weapons in the hands of unhinged sociopaths, theocratic states, despots backed by combinations of criminals and religious throwback nationalism, and/or random primitive states that figured out how to make some, regardless of whether they have capable guidance and re-entry systems.
“Unhinged theocrats”, etc. that you mentioned, are implicit in the times of trouble period. Their presence defines the global tensions of the next 25 years to which the global North will have to adjust. When seen at high resolution, they can be grouped into three categories with metaphorical names:
1) “Khomeini option”
Radical alterity — total collective refusal to play by the rules of the world system. A challenge to neo-liberal ideology, e.g. North Korea, Iran, …
2) “Saddam Hussein option”
Creation of large heavily militarized states with intent of engaging in actual warfare with the North, e.g. Iraq, Pakistan, North Africa,…
3) “Boat people option”
“Third World within” in the core zones of the capitalist world economy. Tipping the scales of demographic balance: e.g. Mexicans in the US, former colonies in UK, North Africans in France, Turks in Germany, Islamic immigration in Scandinavia…
We are already seeing, especially in the last year, to what extent these factors have been influencing the politics in the developed world.
Absurd. “Capitalism” is not the culprit for inept central bank monetary destruction, nor for (ultimately and inevitably fatal) negligent Congressional overspending. You’d be more on the mark blaming “Democracy” – where people vote to receive money that doesn’t exist, and create 3rd rails of entitlement; voting itself has created the entitlement death spiral. It’s shocking to admit, but in that vein, there’s a simple conclusion … Democracy begets Socialism.
Bottom line, Socialism/Communism failed in Eastern Europe/Asia and now they’re gone; Eastern Europe and Asia condemned festering lazy unincentivized squalor in favor of capitalistic prosperity. Yet Socialism/Communism is what the voters are currently demanding in Western Europe and North America. And they just might succeed. There’s your next 30 years, Amigo. I mean Berniego.
I see. So socialism will destroy us all, even though the United States is the most successful (to this point) capitalist society in the history of the world? Socialism truly is the baba yaga of the conservative intellectual caste, isn’t it? If you listen closely enough to this argument, it sounds just like the old socialist lament that ‘it’s a viable system, it just hasn’t been done right.’ As long as the fault lies somewhere else, we can wake up tomorrow and go about our work.
I was actually thinking this weekend about David Brooks, the conservative commentator. He did an interview on some show this weekend and I can’t even remember what program it was, but he said something that I thought was enlightening. He basically capitulated, saying that his brand of conservatism is dead within the republican party in the US. I agree with him. The intellectual conservative is dead. It’s been replaced with a rank of reactionaries who can’t tell the difference between what they feel and reality.
I don’t mean to be harsh, that’s just the way I see this being presented. Without reflection on our own flaws, we’re doomed to repeat history.
That may be the same as saying that we’re doomed. Good luck out there.
I have been wading through Streeck’s book for several months now, and I was glad to see — when I got to the end of the post — that he was cited.
Although I don’t necessarily agree with @Freedom, I do believe that it might not be capitalism that is in danger, but social democracy. Of course, that all gets down to how, exactly, one defines capitalism.
All else aside, these will be interesting times ahead. In addition to this issue, there is global warming, sea level rise, diminishing supplies of fresh water, the coming AI wave and its effect on employment, blockchain technologies, and a host of other disruptive forces afoot. I am basically going to stop working at the end of this year and spend the bulk of my energies figuring out how to navigate the shoal waters ahead.
I would propose there is a 5th option. That Progressive Socialist Capitalism can still reignite the engine of growth and is more realistic than the Decentralized Utopia which just sounds like tech companies just become the fascist rulers in the end. Capitalism has been dying because the bent towards Neo-Liberalism has trumped any and all sense. The fire may be down to embers but it is far from cold. The short sighted nature of deregulated capitalism with highly mobile capital and highly immobile labor with sights on short term profits and stock price rather than value creation isn’t without remedy. Nor are the issues of regulatory capture of the government agencies by the very entities they are meant to regulate, terrible tax policies and campaign finance issues without solutions.
As far as I can see it the biggest hurdle is that the political will for the necessary surgeries to save capitalism is going to be hard to put together for 20+ years while the Boomer generation retains such a large portion of the population. It may be decades of undead capitalism followed by a rapid enlightenment as the younger generations build political will and upon the death of the Boomers rapidly take power. Maybe that’s too hopeful but I don’t see any alternative that isn’t essentially a death sentence for the human species. Neither Democratic Fascism nor Neo-Feudalism are going to efficiently allocate resources and our civilization is too complex to survive that.