[rquantz]

I remember reading a marxist-oriented article about the trend toward apocalyptic movies and books, and the quote that stuck out for me was, "It has become easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism."

I suppose it's possible the things on this list could happen outside the framework of an ultra-capitalist society, but they are so consumer-focused it is hard to imagine them in any other context. In spite of the technical achievements these things would represent, they seem pretty small-bore, really. Is the only better world we can imagine one that resembles the doughy people in Wall-E, floating in their hover chairs with every need attended to?

[x0x0]

I would not be surprised if capitalism ends in the united states in our lifetimes, either peacefully or through violence. Consider the rapid onset of robotization, creating a largely unemployed (and unemployable) populace, with the intersection of current republican party attitudes towards the nonwealthy, which I think can be mostly summarized as "fuck you I got mine".

You may find a book called "Does Capitalism Have a Future?" by Immanuel Wallerstein, et al interesting; I did.

   But a favorable alternative may be quite likely: the institutional 
   transformation from capitalism to a noncapitalist system of political 
   economy—an institutional revolution—could come about through peaceful 
   political process. If the crisis of capitalism is severe enough—a majority 
   of the population structurally unemployed, robots and computers doing almost 
   all the income-generating work but owned by a small number of wealthy 
   capitalists, the economy in deep depression—at some point a political party 
   could win electoral power on an anticapitalist program. Some governing party 
   or coalition would have to replace capitalist production, distribution, and 
   finances with a system that redistributes wealth outside the system of labor 
   market and profit-taking.

re-excerpted from: https://www.salon.com/2013/11/24/millennials_rise_up_college...

book: http://www.amazon.com/Does-Capitalism-Future-Immanuel-Waller...