You do know that all military weapons are purchased using "cost plus" contracts, in which businesses are guaranteed a profit, don't you? And that literally every weapons system comes in over its original budget... and that those cost overruns are absorbed by the government, not the arms manufacturer? There is no Capitalism in the Military Industrial Complex. It's all Socialism, justified by the concept that these weapons are so important to American security that the companies that manufacture them have to be guaranteed a profit, so they don't accidentally go out of business. (By the way, I worked in contracting years ago at the Army Corps of Engineers. So, I know something about how military contracts work.)
Now, getting back to the death of Capitalism in America as a whole, don't be so sad. You know the expression: "From every emergency, there's a chance for something new to emerge."? Well, that's where we are.
We are in one hell of an emergency. And - if you'll step back for a minute - you'll see it's the opportunity of a lifetime.... the opportunity to stop using what no longer works and figure out what does.
And now I'm going to surprise you by (partially) agreeing with John McCain. He says we need a Commission to study the problem. And I agree. But we don't need a Commission of the kind John McCain suggests we have. His Commission would consist of financial experts. And that won't do. Because financial experts are experts in the past.
We need to bring specific, outside of Washington expertise to the party. But they must be experts in the future, not the past.
And what kind of people are experts in the future?
Designers. That's what kind.
Designers know how to envision what's possible from the best of what we know how to do today. They know how to take a clean sheet of paper approach to figuring out how to fulfill a particular need.
Designers know how to take a system that no longer works... determine what assumptions (or design principles) used to build the system are still correct and which are incorrect... substitute new assumptions or principles where necessary... and develop and implement a new design appropriate to the reality of today.
We need people like that... people who know that a tipping point has been reached... that the ground on which our old economic system has stood has disappeared... and that, as a result, the old system is totally dysfunctional. But at the same time, these experts must know how functional - how elegantly functional - our new economic system can be!
We have a chance for something new... something beautiful... to emerge from this emergency! But to do this, we need people who understand how to take a culture through a Great Transition... a transition based on recognizing we're no longer on dry land, as I mentioned above.
So, if we are no longer on dry land, where are we?
Well, the "dry land" of the past is the zero-sum, fixed pie, scarcity of resources based economic model that has existed since the beginning... since the time when two groups of cave dwellers fought over a watering hole that contained enough water for only one group to survive. Humanity has been on that "dry land" for a long, long time. But science and technology - including the power to capture limitless amounts of energy from the Sun - has progressed to the point where we can live in a society based on an economic systems based on abundance (not scarcity).
A world where it's possible for all survival needs to be met. That's where we live now. Call it water or air, it's definitely not the dry land of the past.
And that's why Capitalism has died. Because it is a system that is compelled to try and make more and more money based on Darwinian principles that are no longer true. They were true when Capitalism was created, but they are obsolete now. This death was inevitable, because the mismatch between the world Wall Street thinks exists and the world that really exists is so fundamental... the methods needed to continue making money in a world of the past had become so complicated... that self destruction was only a matter of time.
If the universe is a giant clock, you can only last for so long if you don't work the machinery the way it's designed to work. You will blow up the clock if you don't change what you're doing.
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