There is. It's incompatible with the continuing existence of a living planet.<p>Naturally enough, a billionaire megaconsumer, having bought a moat intended to separate himself comprehensively from physical reality, isn't fussed. But he's a mammal. All mammals live in ecologies, not economies, whatever they tell themselves.
IMO, and likely in many others' opinions there are simply too many oligopolies in the world. Too much concentration of wealth in too few hands.<p>People see that the benefit the large majority of the wealthiest people / organizations bring to society is far from optimal compared to their capacity to do so.<p>I think it's not necessarily that there is an enormous divide between the wealthiest and the poorest. I think the important point is it requires close to an act of God, as a poor person (or just not wealthy), to make the kind of dent most of us want to make in the universe.
> Collier says we’re experiencing three big rifts: 1) a spatial divide between booming cities and struggling small towns ...<p>Strange then that in the US the "booming cities" are voting for more restrictions on capitalism than the "struggling small towns". Yet this is his primary explanation for a crisis in capitalism?<p>Does he mean that the crisis in capitalism is caused by its success? There may be something to that. The most vocal protesters against capitalism tend to come from more economically privileged classes, judging by, say, college students versus blue collar workers. The Australian elections and Brexit referendum echoed that pattern. It's as if protesting capitalism is a luxury good.
Capitalism as it was originally imagined - transactions between people- is the best system. Unfortunately money is now transacting itself. With ai and financial instruments as they exist, there is an order of magnitude more wealth tied up in speculation than actually being used by humans. Money from financial gains should be restricted to being used on products, services, and human endeavor.
>Ultimately, I agree with him that “capitalism needs to be managed, not defeated.”<p>Says the man that used his monopoly to crush his competition, created embrace/extend/extinguish and become the richest man in the world.<p>Exciting now that there are no stakes for him he's thinking about others (in both this and his other philanthropic adventures).
Is there a country with an economic system other than capitalism that is even remotely competitive with the US?<p>Saying there's a crisis in capitalism because some people are poor is like saying the Warriors are in crisis because their bench players aren't getting much playing time.
>But no other system comes close to delivering the innovations and economic growth that capitalism has sparked around the world. This is worth remembering as we consider its future.<p>I ask great authors post this at the start and end of bash of capitalism. It is good we all acknowledge how great markets are, what kind of damage can we do fighting it?
Just in terms of definitions, a crisis of capitalism would be the possibility of some sort of collapse, say financial, from too much QE, stock buy-backs and so-forth, or environmental, from climate change, say.<p>What he's talking about broadly merits being called "problems of capitalism", "injustices of capitalism" or similar labels. These pressing problems but only for those who experience them or those who take the time to discover them.<p>That said, I think one could say a ruling class that is fairly secure is often ruling class willing to toss some benefits to those below whereas a ruling class that's worried can be a ruling class that grabs everything it can. My feeling is the global ruling class is acting worried.
My technical background instructs me that when faced with a seemingly intractable problem or unexplainable outcomes - we’re asking the wrong questions.<p>Capitalism is essentially our new religion. Suddenly responsible for curing all ills, but it’s simply an economic model.<p>It necessitates people be productive, but it also inherently directs income from the poorer to the richer. We in the western world redistribute trillions in taxes for social welfare to attempt to offset its natural effects.<p>As far as creating our utopia, it doesn’t help that political solutions designed to help the middle and lower income classes actually can have the opposite effect.<p>Does making 401k contributions tax deductible, when big banks take a fee on all such deposits, help the middle class save, or does it just more direct tax dollars into corporate profits.