The Inevitable Future of Capitalism

by Michael Sauvante, NovaQuest Ventures © 2008

Subject: A retrospective on the evolution of Capitalism
Timeline: Sometime in the future – date unknown

This article captures and extrapolates the trends that the author sees occurring in the world today and where he believes those trends will inevitably take us, as viewed from an unknown point in the future.  These trends concern the world of capitalism and all the interplays between that institution and society and the planet.  This article will explore what forces will come into play that will bring about fundamental shifts in the brand of capitalism that was born and bred in the 18^th, 19^th and 20^th centuries.

Few would argue that capitalism, and its principal expression—corporations—has become the dominant economic power of the 20^th and 21^st centuries.  Save for the monarchs and other nobility and certain religious organizations of the past, no institution has produced such an enormous aggregation of economic power as we see in the modern corporation.  And like the monarchs and churches of the past, the benefits of that economic power and the control of same, currently rests in the hands of an elite few.

A View From the Future

What we see looking back at the late 20^th century and the early 21^st century is a slowly awakening humanity that began to come to grips with itself and its actions.  It began to realize that it had brought itself to the doorway of numerous self-generated major calamities, ranging from massive climate change and all the resultant ecological disasters that created, to massive societal dislocations and institutional breakdowns, and to catastrophic meltdowns in the whole financial eco system, all the result of faulty economic models and their primary means and motives for economic development, both personal and collective.

Over time it became clear that the near religious belief in free market capitalism and massive consumerism had put humanity on a collision course with global and local limits that forced a fundamental reassessment of humanity’s needs and priorities.  While appearing to temporarily create wealth and prosperity for society at large, it eventually became clear that the modern corporation, in pursuit of its then legal mandate of solely focusing on profit for its shareholders, actually created lasting benefits only for the few and significant problems for the many.  Ultimately society came to realize that such corporate behavior was not in its collective best interests.  From that realization a series of fundamental shifts occurred.....(click here for the rest of the article)