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Let me be clear here about Friedman. I'm not talking about Friedman's models. If Friedman never existed, we'd still have capitalism.

If you look at late capitalism today, especially it's global character, the dismantling of this system would cause such upheaval, especially when it comes to distribution of energy resources and food, that many hundreds of millions would die, if not billions.

It's so systemically entrenched at a global level that a move to another system is the equivalent of radiation therapy to remove a cancer.

Here and there, there may be alternative models, but globally it seems to be the model most countries have adopted.

by Upstate NY on Wed Nov 19th, 2008 at 08:44:32 AM EST
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This flavor of capitalism is not to last long. Although it may repeat itself after 70 years or so. (The magic 70 years - exactly the time for a generation to be born and die out.)

This global capitalism is a problem, in all its unsustainability. The world we know is dismantling before our eyes.

It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine...

I am not talking about imposing other global order. I do not recommend any particular global order at all. In contrary - global top-to-down economic solutions must be resisted. To survive this economic crash, every country, community must have freedom to make decisions of its own. Someone would strike then ingenious solutions very probably. That's why plurality of ideologies is welcome now.

I wish this capitalism to retain most of its structure and buzzing network as it can. But the global system must be open to voluntary unscripted adaptations of its parts. What is not welcome is to let clubs of G20-lite leaders of wealth and power holders to decide everything. That would likely to lead to reversing all social evolution of the last 120 years, back to "Oliver Twist" scale gaps between haves and havenots.

by das monde on Wed Nov 19th, 2008 at 08:31:48 PM EST
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