Assaults on Capitalism

Now that Comunism/Marxism is being visited by the worms of history, what forces can assail good ole Yankee capitalism? It seems likely that since no government or political movement lasts forever, some group of isms will eventually subjegate the freemarket capitalist democracies.

The five horsemen of the apocalypse as I see them:

  1. Computerized participatory democracy. Everybody able to vote on all the legislation all the time. From zoning appeals to death-penalty clemency. Full democracy is "fair", but it will lead to mob rule and a very energetic form of anarchy. Look for the telephone and cable companies to champion this idea through private not-for-profit foundations with names like Democracy Today.

  2. The inability of a one-dimensional unit-of-exchange (money) to equate or value the infinitely reproducable intellectual properties in the form of digital information, yeilding an anarchic two-value economic system.

  3. The smarter things are, the fewer you'll need. Robots can wash dishes and mow the lawn. Computers can be TVs, books, newspapers, telephones and stereos. Perhaps one day science will merge Kleenex and toilet paper. Fewer "things" will undermine industrial economies.

  4. Expert system programs which codify and use the advice of leading human specialists will gut the analytical workers of the upper-middle-class such as lawyers, doctors, and marketing consultants who will band together in violent revolution.

  5. Prescriptive religious movements will be politically powerful and eager to impose their beliefs on others through force of arms.

On the other hand things could be just ducky.

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