Notes from the Future

This week covers the future of our economic systems, the broad network of interconnected systems and institutions through which we make and distribute all the stuff we use. Of course, one likely future for the economy is that someday the capitalist system organizing our economy, based on using markets to distribute goods and private ownership of the capital used alongside labor to generate those goods, will become another system, because nothing lasts forever. Whether that’s in 20 years or 200, capitalism is a particular institution that emerged in a particular set of historical circumstances, and at some point we’ll presumably build another way to coordinate economic activity. This is a challenging and emotionally charged topic for many people: as the quote goes, “it is easier to imagine an end to the world than an end to capitalism”, which people like Mark Fisher call capitalist realism1.