The Demise of Capitalism

This from 1965 …

But the erosion of the market goes deeper yet. For the introduction of technology has one last effect whose ultimate implications for the metamorphosis of capitalism are perhaps greatest of all. This is the effect of technology in steadily raising the average level of well-being, thereby gradually bringing an end the condition of material need as an effective stimulus for human behavior.

Robert L. Heilbroner, The Limits of American Capitalism.

Note it's "well-being" not higher wages. And the timelines are longish: "For roughly the past century and a half the dominant system of economic organization in most of the the Western world has been that of capitalism. In all likelihood, barring the advent of a catastrophic war, capitalism will continue as the dominant system of the Western world during the remainder of this century and well into the next [21st century]."

Something to work for: shifting the ideological construction of the concept of well-being.

And so for day 1778
26.10.2011