Loading...Capitalism can not exist in a closed environment, communism can not exist in an open one
The acid test for any two competing socioeconomic systems is which side needs to build a wall to keep people from escaping? That’s the bad one! We had real-world side-by-side tests with socialism vs capitalism. East and West Germany, North and South Vietnam, and now North and South Korea. And yet we as a society refuse to learn the obvious lesson that socialism is vastly inferior by every metric.
As with the end of feudalism 500 years ago, capitalism’s replacement by postcapitalism will be accelerated by external shocks and shaped by the emergence of a new kind of human being. And it has started.
Information technology has brought about in the past 25 years. First, it has reduced the need for work, blurred the edges between work and free time and loosened the relationship between work and wages. The coming wave of automation, currently stalled because our social infrastructure cannot bear the consequences, will hugely diminish the amount of work needed – not just to subsist but to provide a decent life for all.
There may be trouble ahead…
Ahh, no – that was communism – nothing to do with fascism. East Germany, North Vietnam and North Korea all practice(d) communism. Which is just a variant of socialism, the mother of both communism and fascism. Authoritarian state, central planning, no free market, little to no private ownership. Degrees.
….. but The real-world practice of capitalism typically involves some degree of so-called “crony capitalism” due to demands from business for favorable government intervention and governments’ incentive to intervene in the economy.