I guess I just see it like this: in terms of technology, the world is changing and "progressing" at an extremely rapid rate. I think we'd have more decent technology and much less crazy, evil technology if we didn't have giant corporations buying out people who have ideas that could save lives and money and be more efficient. I think that the scope and scale of this intervention and destruction of good ideas is probably a lot more staggering than we could imagine, especially in the fields of medicine and energy.
That said, I don't really have any numbers or evidence to back up my supposition, at least none that suggests the scale and scope that I imagine. Therefore, my assumptions are a bit dogmatic. However, just looking at the past 20 years, I think it's kinda silly to put one's money on technology to remain stagnant. And looking at the past several hundred years, I think it's very silly to put one's money on capitalists losing their grip on the world by simply messing up. I don't think they're going anywhere until we send them there. To me, the whole "crisis of capitalism" is just a dream of radical leftists hoping to absolve themselves of the duty of social change. Marx thought that capitalism would self-destruct within his lifetime. It didn't. His followers thought it'd happen within 20 years of his death. No dice. People thought it would happen during the '70s due to mass starvation. Not happ'nin'. Hell, hundreds of years before that, Thomas Malthus thought that industrial society was unsustainable and would self-destruct without huge calamitous death tolls. None of this proves that some catastrophe in the future won't wipe out capitalism, but it certainly puts the preponderous weight of evidence on the side of capitalism's adapting perfectly well to changing times. To retourne Charlton Heston, we'll take the world from the ruling class when we pry it from their cold, dead hands.
That said, I don't really have any numbers or evidence to back up my supposition, at least none that suggests the scale and scope that I imagine. Therefore, my assumptions are a bit dogmatic. However, just looking at the past 20 years, I think it's kinda silly to put one's money on technology to remain stagnant. And looking at the past several hundred years, I think it's very silly to put one's money on capitalists losing their grip on the world by simply messing up. I don't think they're going anywhere until we send them there. To me, the whole "crisis of capitalism" is just a dream of radical leftists hoping to absolve themselves of the duty of social change. Marx thought that capitalism would self-destruct within his lifetime. It didn't. His followers thought it'd happen within 20 years of his death. No dice. People thought it would happen during the '70s due to mass starvation. Not happ'nin'. Hell, hundreds of years before that, Thomas Malthus thought that industrial society was unsustainable and would self-destruct without huge calamitous death tolls. None of this proves that some catastrophe in the future won't wipe out capitalism, but it certainly puts the preponderous weight of evidence on the side of capitalism's adapting perfectly well to changing times. To retourne Charlton Heston, we'll take the world from the ruling class when we pry it from their cold, dead hands.
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