The description is a vast oversimplification of the fall of the Roman Empire, of course.
Like the game Monopoly, unrestrained capitalism will always end up with a few people owning almost all the value while everyone else live in poverty, and it will always end up in systemic collapse because you can’t get infinite value out of finite resources. At some point the game will be over.
But unrestrained capitalism doesn’t exist, even in today’s very unequal world. There are forces that undo the momentum of capitalism, including taxation, regulation, trade barriers, and public goods and services. Some countries do this better than others.
I happen to think that regulated capitalism, balanced by a heavy emphasis of wealth taxation and investment in public goods and services, is better than any other system that relies on non-monetary control of resources. It can be sustainable, but not in its current state.
I sometimes forget that this picture exists, and then I happen upon it in places like here and it just smacks me in the face how perfectly it encapsulates the total and utter loss of decorum in politics. I mean it was never perfect obviously, but in past times there was a somewhat reasonable expectation of politicians being civil and them losing their office if they were publicly caught out not to be. It was rare, but it happened. Yet here you have the supposedly “most powerful man in the world” just dropping every pretence and hustling for some company in a flagrant abuse of his office. It’s so brazenly corrupt. And the worst thing is this was just another Tuesday for Trump, mild shit-storm, on to the next fucked up thing he did. Society never even had time to realise what a historic moment this was. It was just dropped on the pile.
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