The Impending Death of Modern Capitalism

Patience, Lucifer. It's happening.

The US dollar has fallen 10% vs a basket of international currency. Interest payments on the debt are approaching 20% of the US government budget. 34 US states now backstop the failing private property insurance market with socialist state run insurers of last resort. The government of the US is withdrawing from scientific research and there is a flight of educated talent overseas.

Laissez faire capitalism is every man for himself ... extracting as much of Earth's resources as possible for their personal benefit without regard to sustainability. It's a system designed to collapse as all empires do eventually.

the USA can default and capitalism still be strong. That the USA is currently the most important capitalist country doesn't mean it is a required element for capitalism to be the dominant system.

Capitalism is the essence and religion of the USA. The failure of that country is emblematic of the failure of capitalism itself.

Capitalism is like a horse drawn wagon. At one time, that was the most advanced and efficient form of distance transportation. Evolution happens and old ways of doing things become obsolete. Capitalism had a very constructive role for a very long time in the competitive advancement of human civilization. Now ... it has transformed into a cancer. We are clinging to a creature which is killing us. At some point, our survival instincts will take over and we will let go.

Like failed Soviet Union for communist ?
Even China turn to a form of capitalism.
The failing of the US would probably end the total free market libertarian ideology like it did to core communist .

Which is probably the right answer.
Gto solution never miss even tho it’s not the most profitable it’s the most stable .
All maximalist exploitative strategy gets wreck to a lesser profitability.

Like if the soviet union failed but 50+ other countries had developed communism when that happened.

I agree with this in an overexaggerated look at it.

But you still have to warrant a replacement that doesn't cause a bigger problem because killing the olds to drop the foot print or taking the most redic authoritarian stranglehold on the people to do so is much more of a cancer than the status quo.

Like I said , China is “communist” but using a form of capitalism …
Like many others .
It’s not a communist economy per se .

And the failing of the US would probably ends the concept of 0 socialism ideology in an economy like Russia did to communist economy..

You are suggesting that a replacement will cause "a bigger problem".

Capitalism is leading us to extinction. It yields zero responsibility or jurisdiction over the shared environment.

We have learned over millennia of indoctrination to equate money with survival and security. But advancement of the human quality of life has always rested upon a foundation of increased efficiency of food production. The Neolithic Revolution, The Second Agricultural Revolution which enabled the labor pool for the industrial revolution and most recently Haber-Bosch method of creating industrial fertilizers.

The outputs of industrial society have created a version of the Earth with which humans are unacquainted. We are vulnerable mega fauna weighing over 50 kg) whose existence is dependent upon the lives of micro-organisms we can't even see. Most of the cells inside a human body are not human .... they are bacterial. We are loading our sensitive organs with micro-plastics and killing ecosystems.

The Earth's atmosphere has not been so loaded with greenhouse gases for 10 million + years. A period of time 40x the length of modern humans and 1000x the length of human civilization. We are like Wile-E-Coyote after he has run off a cliff. We have a long way to fall and we are passing peak food.

We have entered the cruel period. We have stopped providing meds to people in Africa with HIV to prevent transmission to their children. We are cutting Medicaid to over 10 million here in the US while we give more tax breaks to the wealthy. We are watching the starvation of millions in Gaza.

There is no system which causes bigger problems. Nature will dictate our options and we will either learn to live cooperatively with ecologicial sustainability or we will expire.

Capitalism really isn't a system, though. Free Market Capitalism is just how people conduct their economic affairs free of coercive force or the threat of it. So rather than having to come up with a central control mechanism as with socialism, all that's needed for capitalism to happen is for the people to agree not to use/threaten coercive force against one another. In other words, it's not the words we use to describe how people freely behave, it's everyone unfetteredly pursuing their own interests that leads to a Tragedy of the Commons.

Capitalism is most definitely a system. A system which works just as you describe it ..... except that there is always a coercive force.

Survival is an ever present coercive force. Survival compels us to engage in capitalism ..... if we don't, we die. No money ..... no food.

Survival is the coercive force which will take us away from capitalism. We may have to lose 90% or more of the world's population in order to be coerced .... but survival is the ultimate trump card (no reference to DJT intended).

Right, and businesses prioritize quarterly earnings over the long term health of the planet end even the health of individuals.

Capitalism thrives of resource extraction and habitat destruction, sometimes solely for the profits of a few, regardless of the needs of the people have been met - shareholders and such.

Now explain the system that will work to alleviate those issues - regardless of whether it has public support.

... You are crowned king of the world. What are you doing day 1?

King of the world .... day 1.

Probably nationalize Amazon and mobilize it for food distribution. Create a national registry of citizens to ensure that everyone has adequate food.

Create community groups of 200-300 people to which all citizens will belong and have democratically elected leaders who will ensure that no one in their community falls through the cracks.

Restructure the economy so that it meets the essential needs of citizens (healthy nutritious food, clothing, shelter, internet, medical and dental care, education, transportation) as universal basic income and eliminates gratuitous luxuries. Recreational jet travel, fritos, coke, single use plastics, yachts, private jets, etc ...... all disappear.

Taking the survival pressure off of the masses is necessary to keep people calm.

Work will be in food growing and distribution, environmental restoration, education, renewable energy, medical care, community development, transportation, etc. No more speculative trading. No private property ownership. Transition to perhaps 300 sf of housing per person. Create fleets of EV's with drivers to deliver them to people when needed. People don't need personal cars that sit in the garage 23.5 hours a day. Provide bicycles and encourage their usage.

No more national borders so no enemy countries to defend ourselves against and no need to continue investing in massive militaries.

We will either learn to cooperate or we will go extinct. People almost always choose survival when given a choice. They will have to give up the consumption orgy.

Mao Nutz nutz wouldn't last a week, the militaries would execute him, his family, and anyone with at least 1/16 of his genes and move along

Lucifer .... the military is a huge socialist entity.

They already exist in a culture which operates along the lines which I outlined. They get food, clothing and shelter in a manner which minimizes the square footage of housing per person.

Why is the military going to have an incentive to kill someone who insists that the entire culture lives like they do ?

We would all live a military lifestyle ..... except our enemy wouldn't be other people from other countries. Our enemy would be the excesses of capitalism which will take us many decades to repair.

Because at least in the USA, the militaries abhor your values.

You might pull it off if you became a radical right wing person for abortion, homosexuals, perverts of all stripes.

If you were ok with the death penalty for all violent crimes and so on.

Then perhaps you might have a chance to have the militaries on your side (maybe, not obvious).

More nonsense ..... the military does not abhor my values .... in fact, it embraces by and lives by those values.

Everyone is fed, everyone is clothed and given medical care, education and housing. Everyone in the military is your ally.

I merely want to extend that concept to the entire human population. We will become a global military.

The thing we will eliminate is tribalism.

is this thread about AI or just some politics people don't like?

if it is about AI then it does seem modern capitalism is going to be greatly disrupted over the next 10-20 years.

there is another thread about AI in this subforum which is somewhat active.

mao nutznutz thinks capitalism is going to implode because the world is getting slightly warmer

Why do 34 US states now offer socialist property insurance ? Why is the private market failing ?

Under capitalism, who should be responsible for the chemistry of the Earth's ocean's and atmosphere ?

You have no answers for these questions and nothing substantive to say about virtually anything. No brains and no heart is a terrible way to go through life Lucifer.

For the same reason states / the feds subsidize stuff like covering remote areas with the mail, paying atrocious prices to connect remote areas to the electric grid (and now internet) and so on.

Because there is a widespread belief that it's important to cover all land with specific services, even if it's anti-economical, as part of the role of the sovereign. Sort of "if this spec of land can't access service X, then it might as well not be part of our state/country".

The private market for property insurance isn't FAILING. It is just too expensive for specific areas. Which in a sane (for me) world would mean people stop building there (or build in a way that makes insurance less expensive, if available).

State interventionism happens because for non-economic, NON CAPITALISTIC reasons people want the area inhabited anyway and are willing to subsidize people to live there, simple as that.

So you are contesting a *non capitalist choice* as a failure of capitalism, pretty standard for a communist.

//

Now "who should be responsible for the chemistry of the Earth's ocean's and atmosphere "? the question implies someone HAS to be responsible, and i disagree that's has to be the case.

But in general the absolutely only way to have people be responsible for something long term, is with ownership rights. That doesn't exclude the possibility of those rights being collective (ie a state-like entity owning them). But without ownership rights, there is no responsibility long term for any spec of water or land or air.

To note: this again has nothing to do with capitalism, this has to do with the world being divided in 200 + countries.

Imagine for a second every country becoming socialist-communist. Why the actual hell do you think they would then agree on worldwide reduction of emissions more than today? the worst worldwide offender today is a communist country lol.

Individuals, groups, countries, are all always selfish. They don't act against their self interest for long if ever. Also because those who do, get wiped out very quickly by those who don't.

You imagine "oceans" getting magically fixed if countries became all communists. Why? there is absolutely 0 reason to believe that. You might think it could happen if everyone agreed with you. But that's very different than asking for communism and believing that will fix what you care about.

Explain to me how an area that was perfectly habitable the year before and he isnt the year after isn’t a sign of failure of something bigger ?
Especially in area covering millions of people ….

Should the state just not intervene and waste billions , tens of billions of dollars in investissment like housing, infrastructure etc letting create ghost cities and entire regions by people moving due to insurrance private market unable to offre « reasonable private profitable margin » coverage ?

That is the whole issue.
Profit margin .

He doesn't have answers.

The world is resembling a game of musical chairs. The habitable and economically viable places are shrinking and our friend Lucifer can't be troubled to explain why this is happening.

He's like an old fashioned puppet. You pull the string and words come out .... but there is no logic or intelligence.

If you're asking in good faith it looks like an increase in climate disasters, more expensive homes, and the inability for private companies to raise prices too fast to protect costumers to meet those risks. But the govt can charge w/e tf they want, and are, because those plans are dogshit with terrible coverage at taxpayer expense. The private companies couldn't offer that level of ****, legally. Which is a good thing.

But I think there are far better areas to look at to where capitalism has failed than this example because private companies get taken over by the govt just like govt run programs go private. It isn't new and it isnt a big deal.

I wouldnt argue that socialism is no good simply because the telecom biz or amazon's logistics or the mail service or uber or many other areas have produced a better situation than before. Its a multifaceted economy out there.

I don't dispute that private interests and personal incentives have been beneficial in many respects. I don't foresee a world in which we abandon personal incentives.

But the fact is that all of our fates are intertwined and dependent upon the shared environment and capitalism has an Achilles Heel that doesn't provide for its protection. We have a Tragedy of the Commons in which we don't charge a fee for the destruction of the environment and no fee could ever compensate anyway.

All of our bodies have been infiltrated by microplastics and a handful of other environmental toxins. Male testosterone levels have declined by nearly 50% in the last half century.

Amazon just makes the delivery of environmental toxins via unnecessary consumption more efficient. Amazon is wonderful in that Satanic sort of way. If you wanted to accelerate the demise of humanity .... Amazon definitely deserves its share of the credit.

If we want to survive, we need to govern ourselves with the sustainability of our species as the focal point of societal policy.

Unfortunately, human nature is generally only concerned with the sustainability of ourselves in the short-term. Almost no one cares about the continuity of our species as a whole.