The assumptions under which capitalism was built are collapsing
Before I start, let me admit that I'm no historian and I may not be presenting a factual narrative here. What I'm about to construct is a narrative based on the facts we deal with today.
On that note, let's go back in time and imagine the early vulnerable human who lived in the world. To him, the world seemed infinite. Forget oceans, he probably did not even know what lay across a large lake because he probably didn't have tools to cross it. There were no maps to guide him and the earth seemed mysterious and unconquerable.
What's more, taming the world was essential to his survival. As a vulnerable being who was not endowed with great strength; who had to carefully balance himself on two feet and whose offspring needed two decades to mature and take care of themselves, the needs of the human were distinctly different than those of other animals. What he could not overpower with sheer strength, he augmented with tools. The extended nurturing periods for his offspring forced him to search for safe, long-term dwelling. His vulnerable body he found ways to cover to endure the elements.
To this man, exploration of the early earth was a godsend. Each material and method discovered elevated his life considerably. Agriculture and animal husbandry, which is still what keeps us alive (lest we forget) must have been one of the greatest invention of his time. And to me, it is this need and desire to control the elements, which slowly, over millennia, evolved into the system we have today.
Compound interest, is the ultimate expression of this system. Its a system that favors finding exponential value. You borrow some money, and you need to pay it back with interest that compounds over time. That means for any amount you borrow, you pay back several multiples of what you took. In this system, nothing is worthwhile unless the Return On Investment exceeds what you pay back.
Within this system, anything of value can only come from disruptions. A faster horse-cart is not good enough, you need a steam car. A faster steam car is not enough, you need a diesel car. Each one of these inventions elevated the human being's life considerably. Of course, not every bit of value discovered was pure innovative spirit, some of it came from greed, like land ownership.
But there's another fallout of the system, which is that things that cannot be assigned monetary value become invisible and insignificant. Your grandma's recipes don't matter anymore. Christmas is no good unless it can sell Christmas Trees and bring a Holiday season. An Indian Wedding? No good unless you can instill the desire in people to spend and show-off lavishly. That vacation? Don't waste it exploring a forest and enjoying the beauty of plants, go snorkeling, scuba-diving and stay in a five-star hotel instead.
Unfortunately this fallout, is now the reality of a system that has far outlived the parameters and circumstances for which it was designed.
That map that the early human didn't have? Its now available in real-time at centimeter resolution. The materials he found? All mapped on the periodic table. Sure the combinations are infinite but many of the elements which are useful themselves are in short supply. Recycling is now the norm for metals like Copper, for example. The material world is starting to show its limits but the system still demands exponentially larger extraction of value.
We are now, actively working in reverse. Finding ways to feed the voracious appetite of compound interest. Inventing virtual currencies and trying to monetize virtual spaces. The human body is also under attack. The health insurance CEO who was shot was a clear example of the frustration people face with the system, because its not about curing people anymore, its about feeding the gargantuan compound interest machine with profits from treatments sold to people. In the same vein, the human mind is under attack. Attention is now commoditized, isolating people so that their attention can be used to make them feel insecure and incomplete, while they desperately try to solve it by buying products marketed to them and looking happy in public.
In order to make sure that people don't go mad under this system, which they should have long ago, we now have comic relief, fed to us in the form of an infinite scrollable feed, full of "happy" influencers, marketing products 24x7 to us. The feeds themselves sucking the life out of these influencers as they fight an ever-losing battle against time and attention because the system is designed to hurt individuals as it grows, except for a lucky few who make it to the very top.
But its not stopping here, the machine demands even more, so now they've had to steal everyone's data to automate everyone's work away. Humans are a burden to a system that needs exponential growth, so why not optimize them away. Draconian digital surveillance will now create an iron fist, dictating how humans should behave in each and every moment, so that all of the behavioral hints they provide can be used to extract more profit out of them.
When its put plainly, the system sounds horrifying, yet I have neither exaggerated or falsified anything.
But I'm a guy who leans on hope.
The good news is that I see a few voices waking up to the madness.
Some seek a solution within the system, but in my opinion, its the system itself that needs change. The pinnacle of achievement in this system, the US, is struggling under a 39 Trillion(39,000,000,000,000,000) USD debt. So high that a single basis point increase in the treasury bond rate costs the US citizens 390 Billion(390,000,000,000,000) USD per year in interests alone. What invention will overcome this mind-boggling debt is unfathomable. It has to be in the order of cracking something like Nuclear Fusion. Only an absolute miracle can save it.
I do not want to underestimate the humongous task of moving away from the system. It might actually be impossible. Undoing 100,000 years of more of genetic material that has programmed us this way is hard to break.
But I think its high time that we accept that the system has outlived the parameters and circumstances it was designed for, and its time to take a cold, hard (or a warm, soft) look at it.
The system feels real because the rules have been burnt into our brains, but if we take the trouble of questioning it, we might be able to redefine and build new systems that consider the new reality we live in. Maybe the answer is cooperatives, not corporates. Maybe its communities, not isolation. I don't know the avatar of the new system that comes. But I hope it comes in time. Climate is the last foothold we have on this planet. If we lose it, recovery might be impossible and we can safely conclude that nature, in her infinite wisdom, decided that intelligence was a bad gene.