[RD] When will Capitalism end?

[danjuno]

This is an honest question I want to ask and see discussed.

The more I study history, the more I get less interested in the relatively narrow confines of whatever set of issues is being spotlighted in US politics and more in the broader picture of our socioeconomic system.

When will Capitalism end?

How will it end? What will the catalysts for this end be? Will it be a sudden collapse of the current hegemony, or a slow replacement of each of the current components of what we consider modern capitalism by something new?

I don't really have a particular reason to start this discussion here and now, but between the backlash against the current Neo-Liberal order from the left and right, and the threat to the current set-up of boss-worker relations by automation (such as the study saying that half the world's work force could be automated in the coming decade), eventually I just came to wonder how you all felt about the future of the system.

Personally, I feel that a major event in my lifetime will upend the current system, even if it doesn't completely destroy it. Capitalism is being pressured from too many different angles, be it political, technological, environmental, etc.

 

[Kaitzilla]

Is the current system sustainable?

Not even remotely.
So it will end.

I predict central bank majority ownership of everything on earth, a soft socialism.

The free exchange of goods and services, also known as the black market, will never end.

 

[schlaufuchs]

Personally, I feel that a major event in my lifetime will upend the current system, even if it doesn't completely destroy it. Capitalism is being pressured from too many different angles, be it political, technological, environmental, etc.

Same thing was said in 1848-1850, in 1870-71, in 1917-1919, in 1932-1940, in 1945-47, in 1953, in 1964, in 1968-9, in 1978-80, in 2001, and in 2008, and yet somehow capitalism always seems to find a new way to persist. I'm becoming increasingly doubtful that it will ever "collapse under its own contradictions." It is a system which is remarkably good at self-perpetuation.

 

[innonimatu]

Capitalism is a method for a group, a class and its immediate servants, to control political power and its attendant privileges. It will end. It is but one of several possible methods, it rose somewhat accidentally, it spread worldwide through the influence of empires, and suffered setbacks with those empires. There are other methods and some day a different one will be spread instead.

Are we going to ever get rid of small groups controlling political power? Ever get rid of empires and the centralization and homogenization of societies for better control over people? That I'm not sure about. Bit I'm sure that until we do we'll keep having wars. And risk going back to sticks and stones, then the descendants of the survivors will at least be well rid of large empires for a long time...

 

[FriendlyFire]

When we have an AI run government

 

[Phrossack]

Depends on your definition of "capitalism," but I believe it'll end us first.

 

[AmazonQueen]

Same thing was said in 1848-1850, in 1870-71, in 1917-1919, in 1932-1940, in 1945-47, in 1953, in 1964, in 1968-9, in 1978-80, in 2001, and in 2008, and yet somehow capitalism always seems to find a new way to persist. I'm becoming increasingly doubtful that it will ever "collapse under its own contradictions." It is a system which is remarkably good at self-perpetuating.

Yes, it will adapt. Even governments devoted to its extinction like the Soviet Union adapted to it as much as it adapted to them. What models of completely non-capitalist government do we have atm? North Korea?
That doesn't mean we can't find ways to limit and control it. For its own long term good it probably needs us to do so.

 

[Berzerker]

when the last one available to turn out the lights is a robot

 

[tetley]

I could easily see a one-world government, and that government is not capitalist. I could also see capitalism ending because humanity ends. I have to vote "not in my lifetime", because...well...by definition humanity could never end in my lifetime.

 

[Berzerker]

Mr Asteroid would kindly disagree

 

[Timsup2nothin]

I said "not in my lifetime," but I'm a bit old so that isn't necessarily as long as it appears.

Every economic system has done the same thing. It manages the allocation of scarce resources in such a way that "wealth," ie the ability to control that allocation, accumulates into fewer and fewer hands. There are two ways this can end, and one way it can continue.

The first way it can end is some shattering turn of events where suddenly there are no scarce resources. That seems very unlikely to happen, though this climate change business might accomplish it through wholesale slaughter..

The second way it can end is set counter to the way that it continues. Too continue it has to be made ever more complicated so that the people who do not have those ever fewer hands that wealth is accumulating in can be kept confused about what is going on. When that fails, inevitably the people who do have those few hands will get them lopped off, probably along with their heads.

If you look at the current level of willful ignorance required for the everyday citizen in most countries to say "yeah, capitalism is really working for me, yessirree bob!" there is no way to say that it can be sustained for very much longer. Schemes to add complexity are getting very difficult to come up with. Reagan's "trickle down" has become a punch line for anyone that isn't shoving their head so far into the sand that their feet can barely be found, and there doesn't seem to be anything new to take its place.

 

[Bootstoots]

Depends on your definition of "capitalism," but I believe it'll end us first.

I have a pretty strong suspicion that, humans being remarkably adaptable, there will be some viable communities that will survive fairly extreme global warming scenarios (not quite a P-T extinction at +10 C with indirectly triggered H2S release, but easily a PETM at +6 C) and*/or a realistic global nuclear war. If something globally catastrophic is triggered, such that human population was reduced by c. 80-99.9%, it would result in the end of industrial capitalism at least for a time without ending humanity itself.

I don't actually find it likely that even this would occur; instead I imagine capitalism mutating into something not recognizable as such in the next few centuries. Partly this could be a result of actually hitting real limits to growth, which I suspect do exist but are still a ways off - I don't think the economy can be decoupled from nonrenewable resource consumption arbitrarily far, at least meaningfully. Getting robots to exchange electronic currency with each other at ever-accelerating rates doesn't count. But I do think that a mostly decarbonized energy system can be created that can keep growth going for a century or two, despite the consequences of a medium-high level of global warming, plus the occasional "whoops we crashed the economy" every couple of decades or so.

Or maybe most of us will just upload ourselves into a global distributed cyberintelligence and get wiped out following a programming error in 2147, leaving only the descendants of Mouthwash and the other founders of his isolated tribe to repopulate the globe.

 

[Estebonrober]

I think the post growth economy will destroy capitalism as we know it, but it will take a generation or so to figure out how to create something that can be dynamic and innovative in a post growth economy. So I won’t live to see it.

Fwiw this is the most concerning problem for humanity along with global climate change. It’s coming and when it does economies will shake.

 

[Lexicus]

Under the political conditions that prevail, I think most people don't really appreciate how much the rule of capital is going to be hardened by "post-growth", ie, when the climate crisis really starts to cut into real wealth. A pie whose growth is slowing is one thing, with its own set of political questions, which we've been seeing unfold over the last however many years. A shrinking pie is quite another.

 

[Imaus]

Define Capitalism. The Market System? Private ownership of land and capital?

When did it begin?

Such systems might end, one day, though I can veer towards a 'never' that only excludes the eventual death of all Sapient Human and human derived life, whenever that'll be.

Neoliberal Capitalism is going to wither, and Social Democratic Capitalism might never return, and Social Liberal Capitalism might give way to Eco-Capitalism to cope with the world's demand, but I can't see the world forgoing private ownership of land, resources, capital; or corporations, or the market system for private profit by the end of this century...or millennium.

 

[tetley]

Mr Asteroid would kindly disagree

I can safely state with 100% certainty that humanity will definitely not end during my lifetime.

 

[warpus]

One of these has to happen for capitalism to end:

A. Free market conditions are impossible due to:
- deadly meteor
- or invading alien robots
- or AI rebellion
- or nuclear holocaust
- or breakdown of human civilization
- or successful global communist revolution
- or end of the universe
- or something similar

B. Most consumers stop consuming due to:
- humanity is now all hippies
- or we figured out something better
- or we are all dead
- or free energy and replicators exist
- or civilization broke down and it's every person for him/her/itself
- or we have ascended to a higher state of being
- or we have devolved into amphibians
- or we have all agreed to just work together for a better tomorrow
- or something similar

Given all this I estimate that capitalism will end on March 7th, 2481

 

[Timsup2nothin]

@warpus, aren't this item from list A; "breakdown of human civilization" and this item from list B; "civilization broke down and it's every person for him/her/itself" basically interchangeable? I only ask because I think the redundancy should be taken into account in the math used to arrive at that date.

 

[Broken_Erika]

Capitalism will end when the temperature of the earths core reaches absolute zero.

 

[warpus]

@warpus, aren't this item from list A; "breakdown of human civilization" and this item from list B; "civilization broke down and it's every person for him/her/itself" basically interchangeable? I only ask because I think the redundancy should be taken into account in the math used to arrive at that date.

Oh don't worry my calculations are as exact as they can possibly be