brinklindsey

I’ve just completed a series of essays on the crisis of dynamism, concluding with a couple of posts on the outlook down the road. I’d now like to circle back to capitalism’s crisis of inclusion, about which I’ve written a pair of essays, and offer some thoughts about how things might develop from here. What would a more inclusive capitalism look like, and what are the chances of getting there?

The story thus far at The Permanent Problem: Capitalism in the 21st century has triumphed globally and there are no viable alternatives in sight, but its powers as an engine of social progress have been faltering. We have achieved material plenty in the rich democracies, but translating that into widespread flourishing thus far eludes us. Technological progress and economic growth are sputtering; society is riven by a new class divide along educational lines, with the elite thriving on one side while a contagion of social disintegration spreads on the other.

I ended my last essay with a cliffhanger question: is capitalist dynamism doomed? To answer the question, I think we need to distinguish between economic stagnation and an outright end to technological progress. Absent a cataclysm that wrecks civilization, the latter seems far from imminent. (The odds of such a cataclysm, however, are not nearly as long as we’d like.) The pipeline of technological wonders in the works remains far from empty, and I expect at least a trickle of new goodies to continue issuing from it. And, on the upside, the chances for transformative breakthroughs that lift the human condition to new heights seem to be roughly equivalent to those for catastrophe and regress.

The world of modern economic growth and rapid, continuous technological advance feels natural to us, as it’s the only world we’ve ever known. But of course it’s anything but natural: it’s only been around for a couple of centuries, while Homo sapiens