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This piece by Scott Minerd from Guggenhiem Capital outlines pretty clearly that we are at the end of capitalism, and perhaps society as we know it.

https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/us-will-never-return-free-market-capitalism-guggenheims-minerd-warns-current-crisis-lead

Forewarned is forearmed.

I fully agree with Scott's view.  I would however suggest we do not just leave it to the policymakers to "address fundamental reforms in the economy to restore growth and reduce inequality".  Investors need to do this.  I have called the approach Robust Finance: https://www.kenton-dau.com/ and Bitcoin Enhanced is the first of a new asset class that can be part of the solution: https://bitcoinenhanced.io/

If we simply bemoan the mistakes of policy makers we miss the opportunity to see what we and the spirit of decentralised capitalism can achieve ourselves.

I don't think the US was every a free market capitalist country... It's probably hard to swallow for a lot of people from the US but the government often interferes with monetary policy and other areas it wouldn't if it were fully free market capitalist such as regulations from the fda.

Every country in history has either had a socialist system or an imperialisation with one monarchy in the total power...

The socialist policies you're gaining now are more a natural development, it's probably a standard flow into how Europe and other old areas are around now...

It's a Zerohedge article, bro.  What kind of insubstantial end-of-the-world nonsense do you expect from that site?

And since it's from ZH, I'm not clicking on the link or reading it.  I know I'm not alone and that other members have the same reaction to articles they publish.  Maybe it would be better if you quoted some pertinent snippets for those of us unwilling to give ZH clicks.

In any case, we're not approaching the end of capitalism.  It's alive and well and will survive and thrive when other economic systems go bust.  Why?  Because it allows ownership of property and the potential to create wealth.  It's certainly not a perfect system by any means, but it's a hell of a lot more attractive than some of the alternatives.

Strongly agree on this point. Back in mid-March I was in the "V-shaped recovery" camp, pushing the 1987 stock market crash as a parallel and saying this crisis would be one month and then done.

That worked out well for trading the current stock market relief rally, but the underlying economic situation looks exponentially worse now. It's becoming obvious that "reopening" doesn't mean returning to pre-pandemic production or employment levels, and that the pandemic itself will likely last years.

Across the globe, there are no economic numbers suggesting a V-shaped recovery. It has almost become a pipe dream.


Yep, the US is clearly a mixed economy, free markets with state intervention. QE was just yet another policy in a very long history of state interventions.


The trick is to look at ZH's sources. It's not Tyler Durden who made these comments, it was a prominent investment executive at a firm with 270 billion USD under management. I suggest reading the actual letter: https://www.guggenheiminvestments.com/perspectives/global-cio-outlook/prepare-for-the-era-of-recrimination

Marxists were saying that capitalism has just a few years left to live for how long already - 150 years? And even though people think that capitalism emerged after feudalism, the core elements of capitalism existed for as long as civilization and society exist, because having property and exchanging it with others is a part of human nature. Capitalism will never die.


This is just bullshit from someone who has no idea how life was in USSR.

Not just capitalism , but the government did prove that they are inefficient in handling situations like this , they cannot even contain their own citizens , they need to reform the whole government, otherwise the next pandemic will be the end of everyone.
One needs to understand that , society should not be ruled , it should be supported . The leaders are servants , not the King , that is how it should have gone. But instead the corruption have paved the way inside and now it is struggling to be kept together.
Situation is very serious and proper reforms needs to be made in particular sectors .

We are not going to return to capitalism as we know but the same goes to socialism as well.
There is not any viable system that could be the one or the other.
It will be a mixture of the two in order to keep a balance in metrics that cannot be improved in capitalism or in socialism itself.

Is obvious that capitalism is the system for modern age. The survival of the fittest theory best support the capitalism system. The theory encourages individual growth to the benefit of the country and society in general/world. This system has produced a lot of entrepreneurs which are called bourgeois and allowing for the other side called proletariat to progress into bourgeois not limited to class alone - that is the surviving fit of humans in the society and this is guaranteed by capitalism. It has been the system most benefiting the society and technological age we are enjoying now.

On the other way for people who are not favouring the capitalism, they should pressure on the government to be active on their contract with the people on security and regulation or regulating the capitalism system or capitalist activities, otherwise this is the system that has recorded much economic growth and other growth in the sphere of human life.

I don't agree that we are at the end of capitalism. Capitalism is a broad system. It cannot just end as if a fully different system will take over. There is only change within capitalism. I believe the system is dynamic; it adapts to changes. Even in a country as China which officially calls itself a socialist country, there is capitalism.

Modern economic policy-making has never been a one-man show. Inputs from various sectors are not shunned.

This is a pretty good discussion to have and Americans should be paying more attention to this than just looking for clickbaits. I read the original letter and it does say that "Free markets as we know it will end". The way the author builds up the case can be summarized from the following quotes:

• Quote
  Companies and voters alike will soon ask, “Why didn’t I get help? You bailed out the airlines, right? You bailed out all these other corporations. But you didn’t do anything for me.”
• Quote
  The underlying vulnerabilities in some of these industries are not being addressed. Fed purchases cannot turn bad debt into good debt.

This i think is the most important point:

• Quote
  The Fed and Treasury have essentially created a new moral hazard by socializing credit risk. The United States will never be able to return to free market capitalism as we knew it
• Quote
  Eventually, a populist revolt to address the current massive inequality of income and wealth, will happen. Soon pressure will mount on policymakers to bolster the social safety net and increase things like healthcare and job security and maybe even institute a guaranteed living wage

It is essentially saying that the policy of constantly providing crutches to the economy instead of allowing it to self-correct has reached a breaking point with this crisis. This is the kind of crisis which actually needs crutches. As an outsider, it arises no confidence to read that the welathiest nation on earth runs on a system where half the population have savings less than 500 USD and hundreds of millions had to apply for unemployment benefits within a week of the lockdown announcement. Where are the parent institutions and communities that are supposed to be the support-system of a truly bottoms-up, advanced economy?

Add to this the political spectacle of Trump and his followers acting like buffoons with suggestions of injecting disinfectants, one really wonders that does the USA have anything left to claim to be the world's only superpower. It sucks for America and Americophiles like yours truly. (definitely not the food though, Americans truly have the most shit eating habits).

Maybe if there be a new system, we could say a system called neo capitalism   ;D ::). This is because capitalism is always looking in growth of the economy which is the focused of the world now. This says much of the global system we are where every nation is trying to grow beyond others which is good for all.

Decentralized capitalism. Yup! Let's again make everything decentralized!
How about blockchain capitalism?  ::)


Do you know how a bitcoiner defines capitalism?
The only thing that had died more times than bitcoin! ;D ;D


Capitalism is the system for every age in human history.
From the moment the first man traded a stick for rock and the hunter got the best parts of the catch capitalism has been engraved in human history.
Capitalism works everywhere, in the desert, on a remote mountain, in a 10 million city, for socialism you need to combine a nuclear fission reactor with a fusion one, insert a gamma neutrino shield, 4 members of the avengers, 1000 tons of Ewok juice and it will still malfunction because it wasn't the real one.
Chasing real socialism is like chasing Elvis, there are everywhere but not one of them is the real one.

All these talk about capitalism, yeah it’s very bad, it create wealth for the rich, but then poor stay poor, are you getting richer today compare to 2008? May be you have a smartphone on your palm now and you feel you’re living the future because you’re not 2008 again where people are typing on their keyboard on their Nokia, but your swiping the screen on your smartphone, yeah you’re getting richer by evolving from keyboard to touch screen. What else can you brag about besides a smarter devices? No flying car is coming out in this year so we all go to YouTube and watch some crackhead smashing up their iPhone into pieces, to find something to make fun of, and Tesla is not the future it’s just a joke.

In the current global conditions, I think the Laissez-faire principle is difficult to enforce, in America even in the world of Oligarchy and plutocracy is a public secret. A group of people controls the course of government and rich people control the government of a country.

I am among those who are against the American version of capitalism and the Chinese version of state capitalism. It is more fun for decentralized businesses to form U corporations. Or individual businesses without institutions. because increasingly modern business civilization can be done by anyone. Everyone has the same opportunity in generating income.

In this era of technological progress, we can begin to build a populist-based economic system with a foundation that helps to be a solution to overcome social injustice. One example is through equity crow funding which funds small and medium businesses. During this time the upper class exploited the groups that existed at the base of the pyramid. Consolidation of the base of the pyramid will break the chain of accumulation of wealth at the top of the pyramid. So in this economic system, consumers can also act as one of the small investors in their shop business.

You are rich if you don't have to work and spend your life on a boat. That's how I describe "being wealthy"

$2m in your bank account don't mean shit if you still have to go to work tomorrow. You can realize your position and live a rich life but till you do, you are not rich really. (according to me)

That $1k iphone (you can probably have a similar quality phone for much cheaper), $60-100k car (same thing applies, can find something cheaper which does the same trick without having to lose comfort) and similar shit like that you want these because Instagram makes you want to have these.

When you buy these overpriced shit while there are far cheaper options, and you actually support the real rich instead of you try to become one. But you know, it is impossible for everybody to be rich. That's how capitalism works. Some people need to stay as slaves.

And you know what's funny? People want to stay as slaves because that is all they know. That's what they learned from the college they went.

And yet, we're living the best times in human history
both when it comes to poverty
https://i.imgur.com/gtFkQuM.png
or life expectancy
https://i.imgur.com/0c9SYiZ.png

23 charts and maps that show the world is getting much, much better (https://www.vox.com/2014/11/24/7272929/global-poverty-health-crime-literacy-good-news)

Only one thing keeps growing every day
People preaching the doom will come just because they are envious of the others.


Yeah, comrade! Let's burn the kulaks again and rob them and build our socialist state.
Because it has worked so many times in the past it's going for sure to fail again!
Burn the exploiters !!! Death to the upper class! Glory to the working class!
Let's fuck our countries once more and become dirt poor again so we can test again a thing that failed a hundred times in the past!

I wish I'd have a time machine and let you all travel back in time in the '80 and experience socialism as I did, then hear what you would have to say about how great it would be to have those times again.

Don’t get we wrong, I didn’t blame on the price on anything we can buy, what’s I’m sorrow about is the capitalism itself, when I start to embrace this idea which is probably a red flag on me, the capitalism is rewarding the lazy and punish the hardworking people, I see knowledgeable people getting trashed under capitalism, knowledge is trash its worthless, all those smart people who could build civilisation get trashed, being there done that, I can feel that, I’m not saying I’m the most knowledgable person but I feel the wastefulness on it, we no longer value knowledges which is very sad, and don’t blame on the products that we have today which is often lack of knowledges, so what’s the point again, why are we argue here for what? We are salty about being poor, being what you think money is not everything, so a $1000 phone, so a $100k car, so what are the point we are arguing?

We were at least? The data on life expectancy may be looking to go up but not for people poor since 2008, or for people who were fairly wealthy.... There are probably links between poor people and impure drug use or bad testing for drugs (or maybe the rich just take different types), anyway poor people are more likely to be more obese and have other issues so we may well see a dip in life expectancy - just speculation for now and mostly based on Europe.

Extreme poverty in Africa is going down, however for Europe and the americas, there are more people below the poverty line than there were in 2008. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_the_United_States

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Number_in_Poverty_and_Poverty_Rate,_1959_to_2017.png

European averages are around 17% also so both are doing awfully on that front.

That data is global, it doesn't matter how wealthy you are or even where you live the countryside or towns.
Life expectancy is growing, if those times were that bad it would go down.



Those numbers you have shown in the graphics are biased for multiple reasons.
- they fail to take into account how immigrants are influencing the numbers,  millions in the last years
- poverty lines are changing, the same as mentioned in the article itself:


Do you know what middle class was here in the '90?
We were not poor but a car was out of reach, no color tv, waiting for lines for a fridge, a washing machine, the countryside had no phone landlines, no running water, no gas, only electricity and that only enough to power radios or light bulbs, plug in a s9 miner and you would leave a whole town in darkness  ;D
Of course no internet, no personal computers, ..air conditioning? Lol!!!! Air conditioning?  ;D ;D
And yet we were not poor!
Compare that life with what a poor family has let's see who is having a more comfortable life.

At the beginning of the century, you were poor if you couldn't afford glass windows, now you're poor if you can't buy the newest Iphone! (pun!)

The progress look great, keep it at that pace forever, don’t change that, and nope I’m not literature enough to read what’s the tables are showing about, I think I look very green very positive. Btw it’s what capitalism want so badly.

That’s what I called living the future, from keyboard to touch screen, from 2008 to 2020, we changed from keyboard to touch screen. From can’t afford glass windows to can’t afford latest iPhone. From bicycle(in 90’??) to car, it’s future! That’s sound meaningless, clearly defending a losing envaedor. The thing that bitcoin exist isn’t to promote capitalism, I don’t know whether it’s still a thing today in bitcoin community, I believe it’s about fair distribution of wealth, especially distributing the fund to the knowledge based community, may be bitcoin was mean to help the person who was once highly knowledgable Ivy League graduate who after leaving school and getting trashed under a capitalism working environment where their knowledges has found no place to be utilised but they resort to office politics to survive the careers, where schools are often face with short of funding from the govt because you know people don’t value knowledge, they just want to destroy knowledges, burn the scholars alive so they can’t make noise, bury them alive. When I look at Vitalik Buterin, and I look at friedcat(username), I think they’re very knowledgeable and they know what they’re fighting for, the utopian society where knowledgable people are getting reward, and lazy people get punished, but I think it’s challenging task.

Each theory can live, but most of them die. So it was with communism, so it will be with capitalism. Maybe not now, but someday he will not be either, and something new will come to replace him, which will be convenient to meet the demands of both the upper and lower classes.

Which is not even new. Neo-capitalism has been here for several decades already. It is basically a tamed version of capitalism; one which is somehow not very selfish. Neo-capitalism is basically a hybrid system; one which is open to government intervention, in contrast to laissez-faire capitalism. This is somehow a balanced system in that it seeks social well-being aside from the usual profit.
 
The point is, there is no end to capitalism. It evolves, of course. Again, it adapts to changes.

More here: https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/what-is-neo-capitalism.html.


Capitalism is not just a theory. That is exactly the kind of society we are living now.

Communism is different. It was never really practiced. It won't die because it has never gained life in the first place.

Socialism and capitalism were invented by people. These are far from ideal social systems. At the same time, everything moves and develops. We really will not return to the society in which we lived earlier. Now the edges of capitalism and socialism are being erased, we are moving towards the creation of a society that is not in the textbooks. Perhaps we do not need any political superstructure. We will simply develop, observing universal human values.

There is no way public would ask questions like that, there is no way it will happen in the future neither, the world gets progressive but only for the human rights stand point and not for the money points. You know who pays the politicians? The companies, you know what those companies care about? Their money.

Doesn't matter if it is a republican or a democrat, they will pay for that persons whole life until that person is either elected or retires, they do this with every single politician they can and eventually one of them becomes president. Long story short in the world of politics if you want to be progressive about abortion rights, gay rights, minority rights, or any other right that is a bit more "marginal" compared to past like weed legalization and so forth, you can fight for that, there is a chance progressives win and they usually do win after decades of fighting, but when it comes to economy, it will always be right wing win.

We can take it from the right and pull from the left and then combine the positive points of both of course by adjusting the timing and the problem. There is no pure socialist state and no pure capitalist country now.

In addition to knowledge, there is one system that is considered to be able to combine the two main points of socialist and capitalist teachings namely the Islamic economic system whose core teachings are all centered on the creator of matter, not the goal but only a tool to lead to the creator. In Islamic economics there is no prohibition on being a capitalist, it's just that the more wealth owned, the greater the obligation of zakat (must be done and sinful if not carried out implemented) that must be distributed to others in need. Besides that in the Islamic economy, there is also a suggestion to share (if not done is not sinful, if done is rewarded)

If in the capitalist and socialist laborers are exploited in the teachings of Islam the worker is close to God, his wages must be paid immediately before his sweat dries. In addition, resources related to the lives of many people are controlled by the state to be used for the benefit of all humans, because the natural wealth belongs to God not to be owned by a group of people.

That is probably true. Capitalism will survive but probably will change and modify.
After this pandemic world is heading towards probably very long and deep economy and financial but also social crisis. Relations in our society will change, as well as attitude towards human rights and whole world might become even more restrictive.
Capitalism definetely isn't ideal model but so far we haven't invented anything better, so it will survive. However, now it's the time for changes and improvements.

End of capitalism? All privious crisis only made capitalism stronger. We just dont have good alternatives right now