[AnimalMuppet]

But the thing is that, if the institutions collapse, that isn't actually going to be good for the capitalists. They're making far more money from the working system than they would from a collapsed one.

So either those capitalists are very stupidly short-sighted, or blaming all this on the capitalists is mistaken.

I find the explanation of foreign agitprop to be more believable. At least with that explanation, you're dealing with an actor who actually benefits from the collapse.

[lamontcg]

1. They don't believe the systems will collapse. Musk (to just use him as an example) has a meme-level understanding of the government and macroeconomics, so they may not be judging the risks very correctly.

2. They don't care if the systems collapse, as long as they wind up with more than everyone else.

[unclebucknasty]

There are select capitalists who want to replace the current order with something that further empowers them.

I'm not sure it's accurate to continue calling them capitalists, though they certainly benefited from capitalism.

If you consider, for example, the current AI push and its goal to essentially eliminate the need for human labor, you find that such a result would not be a form of capitalism that we recognize.

In fact, those pushing this outcome have talked of the need for UBI, which would seem the ultimate socialist scenario. But, even socialism doesn't quite fit, because it wouldn't be society that owns the means of production and distributes resources, but those who own the technology.

All of this to say, I'm not sure our current economic frame still applies to what may be happening, and this is one more example of the dramatic change the article talks about that we appear to be dealing with via normalization.