On December 28, 2016, Crawford Killan writes on AlterNet at http://www.alternet.org/economy/end-capitalism-and-end-our-world
The author of the piece as well as the author of the book it is based on, How Will Capitalism End? by Wolfgang Struck, is not well read on the subject or they would have certainly come across the writings of binary economist Louis O. Kelso, who for 50 years has proposed the just solution.
Capitalism, as a reality, is a system in which the OWNERSHIP and CONTROL of non-human capital wealth assets is concentrated among a tiny class of wealthy capital OWNERS, who have rigged the system in which the requirement to form new capital assets (economic growth) is PAST SAVINGS, which the vast majority of people do not have because they are not in a financial position to deny consumption in order to save. Thus, we end up with Hoggism.
The capitalism practiced today is what, for a long time, I have termed “Hoggism,” propelled by greed and the sheer love of power over others. “Hoggism” institutionalizes greed (creating concentrated capital ownership, monopolies, and special privileges). “Hoggism” is about the ability of greedy rich people to manipulate the lives of people who struggle with declining labor worker earnings and job opportunities, and then accumulate the bulk of the wealth through monopolized productive capital ownership. Our scientists, engineers, and executive managers who are not owners themselves, except for those in the highest employed positions, are encouraged to work to destroy employment by making the capital “worker” owner more productive. How much employment can be destroyed by substituting machines for people is a measure of their success––always focused on producing at the lowest cost. Only the people who already own productive capital are the beneficiaries of their work, as they systematically concentrate more and more capital ownership in their stationary 1 percent ranks. Yet the 1 percent are not the people who do the overwhelming consuming. The result is the consumer populous is not able to earn the money to buy the products and services produced as a result of substituting machines for people. And yet you can’t have mass production without mass human consumption made possible by “customers with money.” It is the exponential disassociation of production and consumption that is the problem in the United States economy, and the reason that ordinary citizens must gain access to productive capital ownership to improve their economic well being.
For an alternative based on personal OWNERSHIP of capital assets widely distributed and gained simultaneously with the FUTURE growth of the economy without taking from those who already OWN, see my article “Economic Democracy And Binary Economics: Solutions For A Troubled Nation and Economy” at http://foreconomicjustice.org/11/economic-justice/
