[0xDEAFBEAD]

I don't think there is any scholarly basis for the term "late-stage capitalism". It's just a meme that kids started using. Power-hungry, unprincipled people will exist regardless of a country's economic system. But people are very imaginative in attributing various social ills to capitalism in particular.

[skulk]

quick Google search shows that the term has been in scholarly use for at least 50 years now and means pretty much exactly what "the kids" are talking about.

[0xDEAFBEAD]

So we've been in the "late stages" for at least 50 years? Is there any sort of falsifiable hypothesis there?

https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=late-stage+cap...

You can see from Google Ngram Viewer that there's almost no usage before the year 2000, and the vast majority of usage is post-2015. My guess would be that recent usage has only a tenuous connection, at best, to scholarly usage from 50+ years ago.

[kmeisthax]

"Late-stage capitalism" is just "reimposing feudalism[0]" - i.e. going back to an economic system in which the vast majority of an economy's wealth is rents charged on the use of valuable property. "Capitalism" as is propagandized in capitalist societies is an economy in which the majority of wealth is profits earned as the return on a risk-bearing investment. Being beholden to a free market economy means you have limits to your power - not great limits, but limits none-the-less.

In other words, capitalism is a necessary transition between feudalism and feudalism.

[0] Insamuch as the term even has meaning. Medievalists and historical researchers will correctly call this out as an overloaded term.

[wslh]

Beyond the specific term, there is a "sign of the times" we are living. Nowadays the issue with political sciences and philosophy is the partisan, left-right spectrum view that it is difficult to break in in discussions (including HN).