Capitalism, the Word, Should Not Be Used Anymore
Capitalism, today, has a meaning that is very vague (deliberately so) where it is about a market that is seemingly free. Where all people can, seemingly, start their own business and succeed. And where you can, seemingly, take your capital money and invest it to make more money.
The reality is that you cannot start a large corporation, build it from the ground up, and become one of the giants. It only seems like you can.
This is in, sort of the same way that Marxists think they can seize the means of production, not realizing that when they steal all the machinery, the business that was there is now gone. The magic glue that made it work, that made money, that kept things going, is gone.
They call it "late stage capitalism", but that is a poor wording for, "someone stole all the fire, the entrepreneurial spirit, that is the driver behind capitalism.
Slowly everything has been completely stifled. In the 70s there were all kinds of ideas to improve cars and engines. And just like Tucker, all those ideas were bought up and put on a shelf. Stifled. We haven't had any real improvements in cars or engines in decades. All we have gotten is an iPad stuck into the dashboard.
What Capitalism used to mean
Capital is the stuff you have, that can be used to build things.
In the Industrial age, it meant a factory building, the land that it sat on, the machinery, and the people, the human capital that you apply towards making a product. A product that would be sold in a mostly free market.
In college, businessmen would be taught about how to accumulate capital. You have to get all that stuff in one place so you could get your factory set up and running. Borrowing money usually meant asking your rich uncle for a loan. Or finding venture capital. So, you took extra from one department, and moved it to the new department, scrounged old parts, and did what you could to get together the capital.
This is what Capitalism was.
Banks and fractional reserve lending basically made this obsolete.
Capitalism today
The banksters have gotten rid of all constraints on printing money. Meaning the banksters can out-compete, outbid everyone on everything. (There are, now, only constraints on do not get caught buying up everything. So, they created Black Rock and the Plunge Protection Team to buy up everything)
So, you no longer work at getting Capital (stuff), you just got to convince the banks to lend you money.
And the big boys, the friends of the banksters, basically just have an open line of credit.
In other words, you cannot start a business and build it into a huge corporation. At some point, T.H.E.Y. will buy you out. And, if you don't sell, your corpse will sell, or the corpse of your corporation will sell. T.H.E.Y. have no problems in running you out of business. And they have all the money in the world to do it.
When you speak of Capitalism today, it is merely a show, a facade. The banksters run the govern-cement which decides who can be the Monopolies, (not block, or breaking up monopolies as the law states, but deciding who are the winners)
The banksters only fear being exposed, and someone wresting control of the military to use against them.
The banksters, through special deals / sweatheart loans, moved America's industry to China. Where T.H.E.Y. can manufacture without so much regulation, pollute as much as they want to…
We might call this Bankster-ism. Crony-Capitalism is the bland word in common parlance.
Capitalism? in the future?
However, the world has changed. Giant corporations are going to collapse, fall over and turn to dust.
Robots are becoming ubiquitous. Soon, with free(ish) energy, you can run robots making things just as well as a large corporation. And the guy building things in his garage has almost no overhead. Making it impossible for the giant corporation to compete (except with free money printing). Further, as we start making appliances that last, the corporation dies because they have a minimum number of parts they HAVE TO make each year or go out of business.
And then comes the change to real money, meaning no more money printing, and the corporations have to start really competing. Keeping them afloat with printed money will no longer work. Their inefficiency will kill them.
When we go to real money, we will also be demanding items that are of good quality. We will not part with our money for cheap stuff. And this makes the garage manufacturer even more competitive because they can just shut down and go on vacation when they have no orders. Unlike the large factory that needs to keep running because of its overhead costs.
Will we call the local manufacturing diaspora "Capitalism"? Maybe. It is more Capitalist than what we have today. But, i would be more than happy to see a better name being used.
Will capitalism end when we build a solid, everlasting, repairable toaster for everyone? With 8 billion people, will we be all done when the toaster-o-meter ticks over from 7,999,999,999?
Well, at that point we won't need a manufacturing plant trying to crank out as many toasters as possible. The entire business model dies.
It is like the industrial age being surpassed by the digital age. The corporate-bankster "Capitalism" age will be surpassed by local manufacturing and free(ish) energy.
The things keeping the giant corporation in place, its foundations, so to say, are all going away. The bankster-ism falls down no matter what they do. Keep an eye open for dying, thrashing dinosaurs. Stay out of their way.