Reply To: (Is this really ) How Capitalism is Killing Itself?


Latest News Forums Discussion Forum (Is this really ) How Capitalism is Killing Itself? Reply To: (Is this really ) How Capitalism is Killing Itself?

#33870
Phil the ex frog
Guest

Baal

Before you go, can I just suggest that a point may be in danger of being overlooked here. Capitalism has evolved beyond the late 1890’s. Power has been recaptured by the financiers, to the detriment of all others. Using future debt for present purchases, they assure themselves an interest income stream on every transaction taking place, frequently to a value greater than the commodity thus mortgaged. This gives them a lien on the producer and consumer which arguably was last seen pre-Industrial Revolution: feudalism. Instead of being the serfs of the landlord and paying tithes to the Church, anyone using any financial facility is now the serf of the bank (your debt becomes its credit, available immediately to it), and paying tithes (interest) to it. Incidentally, because the overall value of the transactions doesn’t actually increase much, this leads to a progressive debasement of the currency, which some call growth.

Not sure if I fully understand your comment. Let me see if writing a respond helps.

I suspect you are overstating the importance of the financial sector’s excess.

Not everyone is in debt. Big businesses are rolling in cash. Finance may be the big daddy but others are not suffering. Tech is positively booming. The hoarding of cash, mostly offshore, is the cause of the money supply crises isn’t it?

That the majority of us live in debt is just a slightly more aggresive form of capitalism. Not feudelism. We are still paid wages.

OK, perhaps I see what you’re getting at. Is it this: work is becoming less needed and less available as individual debt increases. So if no one is paid wages where the fuck does that leave us regarding capitalism.

I went to a really interesting talk last week. Are you familiar with Maynard Smiths 8 leaps of evolution. Applying the attributes of these leaps the speaker proposed we are on the verge of number 9. Technology. Soon we will not recognise the world we inhabit. In ten years time no one will be allowed to drive cars on the road. No one will need to work. Very few will be working.