Capitalism as we know it, is near to being in free fall collapse. Already the banks have had socialist bail outs, and the cure is not more anarchy and concentration of value with the rich. Neither is it a shift to oligarchy in the USA and a federal equivalent in the EU and China a solution as proposed by the "free" market leaders.
Instead a new paradigm economy, based on a synthesis between marketism and humanism, will develop and this will have some suprising characteristics I summate from many other sources and hypothesise further here:
1) Food, Electricity/heating and Transport will become a lot more expensive. We must get used to paying more for food, using less electricity and travelling less. This is a good thing and we will explore why in my points below:
2) Wages are not going to increase for the vast majority: the contrary- capitalism will try to make us work longer hours for the same money or less. Discretionary income is going to decline more rapidly as capital takes more control of property and planning processes for new housing.
3) The two forces above will lead to a negative spiral in the global capitalist system. Not a destruction of it, but as in the 1970s communism, a stagnation as it fails. It is biting it's own tail because it no longer beleives that investing in western companies is profitable enough. While the western markets for eastern goods decline as a result of higher unemployment and lower value creation in the west. We are seeing the prediction for lower growth in China. sub 5% growth in China constitutes stagnation because ROI will decline more rapidly due to fulcrum effects on turn over, profit and capital value.
4) we stand then at a time for Reformation of the whole economic principle systems we live within, and how market economics and democracy are freed increasingly from international capital.
5) The above forces and the reformation of marketism will be mediated on a personal level, not by presidential leaders. It will circumvent the traditional political parties by utilising the internet.
6) thus the internet, once feared as the fuel for globalisation, will facilitate pico economic systems: local, sustainable and stable businesses and exchange of values at an extended family, geographic and cyber community level
7) Because food will be more expensive, locally produced and organic, shorter travelled food will become more economic to buy. We will use more of our income on food and less on trinkets of materialism.
8) More value will be retained in local communities: this means national or international currency will be locked more into pico economies. Also alternative forms of currency and tax circumventing barter will become more prevalent. It means more importantly that more people will realise the value of their time and choose to use less time on conspicuos-consumerist oriented economic activities.
9) the old capitalist system will have to exist along side this new paradigm.
10 ) as the new paradigm, the novel evolving pattern, will develop as an attractive alternative to international captialism and working for corporates.
11) Faced with the poverty created by the finance catastrophe (2008-2020 ?) governments will be forced to examine where money flows and to cooperate more with the new paradigm of social enterprise in delivering public services rather than those privatised into
11) people need not "drop out" completely - a large section of those marginalised by poverty or virtual property-poverty will spend more of their time on human value activities and move to areas with cheaper housing. They will sell and engage their skills through the internet and develop new skills and activities which are utilised in the local geographic community and niche cyber communities.
12) the means of production of intellectual value will move from corporates to individuals, owner-owned companies and social enterprises.
13) People who are in need of social services will find themselves as in the USA, increasingly reliant on charities. However, healthy people will engage more in charity activity on a local level and develop skills for value gain, and personal fulfilment, without being bound to expecting a monetary reward. Whole families will engage in this, and the extended family will become more important.
14) Centrally to this whole movement is the humanistic view that human oriented activities are more rewarding than economic, inpersonal activities with material outcome expectations. Time is our greatest thing to contribute. The protestant view of the nuclear family will start to evapourate as we are required by market forces to care for our own elderly more to increase their quality of life beyond public and charitable delivery, and we start to care more about those less fortunate than ourselves in our communities. More people in western countries will decide to evaluate their time investment and wage-time payoff and also re-examine their consumerist views.
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