Wall Street Reform Passes

[Beet]

If you look at at modern capitalism in the long run, from its origins in the Netherlands in the 17th century, it is clear that it has always been accompanied by greater amounts of two things. (1) is greater amounts of or access to new markets, and (2) is greater amounts of financial sophistication, leverage, and debt.

(1) is sustainable, I think, for a while yet. The Chinese market is nowhere near saturated in the long run, and either are any of the BRIC countries or regions. In 20 years India will be the world's most populous nation, despite India's impressive growth thus far the entire subcontinent is a practical "virgin lands" for capitalism. Then after that there is Africa. (2) is much more questionable. The developed world seems tapped out, or very close to it.

Nonetheless, capitalism is a bad alternative but better, much better, than any of the others. What may happen instead is that the expected economic returns or performance that we expect to get from it diminish. This would not be a horrendous outcome, so long as a mediocre level of economic performance was stable and sustainable, and humanely distributed. Developed countries certainly don't lack for 'stuff', and we never have to. What would be horrendous would be to allow the system to somehow careen out of control and entirely crash or unravel.