# Late Stage Capitalism **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [January 8, 2025, 12:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/late-stage-capitalism/1012725 "2025-01-08T12:53:42Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Lord\_Feldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lord_feldon/32/341_2.png) [@Lord\_Feldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lord_Feldon)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2025, 10:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/late-stage-capitalism/1012725/41 "2025-01-09T10:03:05Z")
> [@bump](#): > > It’s mostly dumb-ass freshman year stuff, but for some reason, grown people are subscribing to this nonsense. It’s just The End Times for people who come from non-religious backgrounds. ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2025, 10:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/late-stage-capitalism/1012725/42 "2025-01-09T10:35:25Z")
> [@Lord\_Feldon](#): > > It’s just The End Times for people who come from non-religious backgrounds. Civilizations do decline, you know. It happens fairly regularly. ---
**Author:** ![Bbbb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/5daacb/32.png) [@Bbbb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bbbb)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2025, 10:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/late-stage-capitalism/1012725/43 "2025-01-09T10:51:38Z")
> [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](#): > > _The Dawn of Everything_ by Davids Graeber and Wengrow has cast significant doubt on any inevitabilist narratives of human development. Amazing book but I worry that it says something so hopeful to me that I can’t be objective about it. One thing I’ve noticed lately is how much people are aware of how bullshit their jobs are. They can’t do much about it, but people seem more aware. It gives me some hope there is mounting momentum for some change. ---
**Author:** ![Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/half_man_half_wit/32/21766_2.png) [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Half_Man_Half_Wit)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2025, 11:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/late-stage-capitalism/1012725/44 "2025-01-09T11:21:29Z")
> [@Bbbb](#): > > One thing I’ve noticed lately is how much people are aware of how bullshit their jobs are. They can’t do much about it, but people seem more aware. It gives me some hope there is mounting momentum for some change. I think (and I acknowledge I’m working on a biased sample here, plus gradually sliding into old-fogeyism about the younger generation) that awareness, these days, comes cheap, but action is at a premium. Everybody is hyper-aware of the specifics of their individual malaise, be it economical, social, or psychological, but from that awareness, very little seems to follow. Dissatisfaction has become commodified to the extent that we now wear it like a new pair of Nike trainers. Mark Fisher in _Capitalist Realism_ gives the example of Kurt Cobain, aware that what sells best within the system (concretely, MTV I believe) is rage against the system, but powerless to change it, because what are you going to do, _not_ rage? And I think that’s all of us now, kind of. Sure it’s a bullshit job, but what can you do? ---
**Author:** ![Bbbb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/5daacb/32.png) [@Bbbb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bbbb)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2025, 11:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/late-stage-capitalism/1012725/45 "2025-01-09T11:51:24Z")
> [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](#): > > Kurt Cobain Poor dude might have been OK if Nirvana weren’t so marketable. Talking about how capitalism can subsume all criticism sounds academic but it really did a number on him, just wanting to play in a band and express himself. Things will have to get worse before they get better for sure. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2025, 2:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/late-stage-capitalism/1012725/46 "2025-01-09T14:33:19Z")
> [@Kropotkin](#): > > people do not agree on a definition of “capitalism.” That’s part of the problem right there. It’s GOT a definition, and it’s a strictly economic one. If other people want to muddy the water through ignorance or their own axe to grind, that’s a huge problem. > [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > It’s humanly impossible to contribute so much more to society than the average person that you deserve _billions_ of dollars; and looking at actual billionaires most of them are incompetents and parasites. And then there’s the issue of widespread poverty and general social decay due to most money being siphoned off the the ultrawealthy. > > So yes, nobody has _that_ much money without having screwed over vast numbers of people. It’s impossible to achieve otherwise, destructive to society, and matches the actual sorts of people who are billionaires. Counter example: Mark Cuban. Guy got paid a billion bucks for Audionet, and wasn’t even close to a billionaire before that. Didn’t fuck anyone around to get there either. And who the hell cares if billionaires “deserve” it? Nobody deserves anything- billionaires don’t deserve their money, homeless don’t deserve to live in dumpsters, and so forth. This is **EXACTLY** the sort of sour grapes I was talking about. It’s all about “deserving” and other nebulous and mushy emotional nonsense that doesn’t really have a place in an economic discussion. > [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > The key to being rich in modern America is choosing the right parents. And that’s different than exactly _when_ in history? I’m not saying the historical way of doing things is good or right, but merely that what’s going on right now isn’t without precedent. There were still rich nepo babies in the 1950s, 1920s, and every other time period in history. Og the caveman probably had a leg up on his cave bros because his dad Gronk had a great space in the cave that Og inherited. Or maybe a really straight spear. I’m not arguing that the current system isn’t bad. Far from it. What I am arguing is that it’s far from unique, and capitalism itself isn’t to blame. What’s causing a LOT of it is this flawed narrative that (paraphrased) “Americans should be able to support a four person family with one wage earner” and that “supporting” entails home ownership, two cars, cable TV, high speed internet, a vacation every summer, and so on. It’s a legacy of the era my grandparents lived in post-WW2, and _ **it wasn’t even really true back then.** _ My grandfather worked in a chemical plant as an operator - it was a pretty lucrative blue collar job. That afforded him one car, a small house, vacations that were financially tight road trips to visit relatives. They didn’t have cable TV (hell, he built his own TV via Heathkit), internet, or anything beyond the newspaper and maybe a few magazines. My grandmother cooked from scratch all the time. And it wasn’t true in my parents’ day either- maybe briefly in the early 1970s when the stars aligned just right for our family, but that didn’t last. Most of my life, both of my parents had to work, money was tight, and we never had any spare cash for vacations whatsoever. And I don’t think anyone really expected that in my Gen-X day. Even working in tech in 1997, I was never so flush as all that. Hell, I still can’t pull it off on one salary. But the thing is, I never expected to. The _first_ of my peer group that I know of who bought a house was in their early thirties. And he was single, working in tech, and fairly flush. The rest of us had to wait to get married and accumulate a bit of cash before kids. So hearing that some Gen-Zer is sour because they can’t live the myth is generally met with a certain level of disdain and derision on my part, because they’re detached from reality. And I often wonder how they came collectively to believe in that myth, because it’s certainly not their parents and grandparents distributing that nonsense. > [@Horatius](#): > > The problem being pointed out by the late-stage capitalism people is that capitalism _isn’t working that well anymore_. We’re still producing massive amounts of excess wealth, but more and more of that is going to fewer and fewer people, so that most of us aren’t seeing any benefit from it. Uh… you do know how _ **Capitalism** _ works, right? It’s never been intended to distribute wealth fairly or equitably. To those with the capital go the spoils. But the thing is, that fires up a series of downstream effects- those with capital reinvest it to make more money, which creates jobs, which creates a tighter labor market, which makes wages go up, etc… Where today’s scheme diverges is that the reinvestment is often just financial. These folks aren’t plowing their excess cash into businesses, but into financial instruments. Those don’t create jobs, new products, etc… And a lot of the jobs we’ve got are either white collar jobs that require high performing people, or they’re highly routinized where _ **anyone** _ can do them, which means there’s no upward wage pressure, because there’s a huge pool of qualified people who all need a job. If someone doesn’t like that job, there’s a bunch of people waiting to take it. I don’t know the solution; Protectionism isn’t it, but free trade is going to mean that most manufacturing jobs are going to be overseas. And things like raising the minimum just move the goalposts/lines on the field without actually changing the game. ---
**Author:** ![OldOlds](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/a3d4f5/32.png) [@OldOlds](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OldOlds)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2025, 2:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/late-stage-capitalism/1012725/47 "2025-01-09T14:38:17Z")
Well, I’ve said in another thread that a good start would be taxing the super rich more fairly. And note I said fairly, not punitively. I don’t know how much it would help the bottom, but it might eliminate some of the resentment. ---
**Author:** ![DocCathode](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/doccathode/32/18773_2.png) [@DocCathode](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DocCathode)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2025, 2:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/late-stage-capitalism/1012725/48 "2025-01-09T14:47:51Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > The key to being rich in modern America is choosing the right parents. I would argue that this actually matters much less in modern America than in most of human history. Under the feudal systmem, which I mentioned before, the chances of a serf becoming anything other than a serf were almost zero, OTTOMH the rich kid who started Occulus, or the kid who made Minecraft were from middle class families with no special financial or technical resources. How rich are they now? ---
**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2025, 2:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/late-stage-capitalism/1012725/49 "2025-01-09T14:52:29Z")
> [@OldOlds](#): > > Personally, I think a lot of them are a bit disappointed (rightfully) in their own personal economic outlooks and have just decided that since everything sucks this must be late stage capitalism. Yeah, this. If this is “late stage” capitalism, what was the era of robber barons and monopolies? Clearly that was a _worse_ form of capitalism than what we have today? ---
**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2025, 2:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/late-stage-capitalism/1012725/50 "2025-01-09T14:53:30Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > It’s a medical term. Having a late stage disease means that the patient is about to die. Right, but the people crowing about Late Stage Capitalism didn’t diagnose our system; they heard a guy they dislike coughing and declared he has terminal cancer. ---
**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2025, 2:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/late-stage-capitalism/1012725/51 "2025-01-09T14:55:05Z")
> [@Reply](#): > > It’s largely the mindset of an American (and elsewhere) working class born into a capitalist society with a dying democracy, no social mobility, abhorrent income inequality, and no real possibility of ever owning real estate or meaningful capital (as in investments). The system doesn’t really work for them, and is in fact designed to exploit them and depends on suppressing their real wages and undervaluing their labor to prop up the rich. > > The old American Dream (middle class homeownership etc.) doesn’t really apply to a large swath of our population anymore, and they don’t have much spending power. The economy just doesn’t really have any meaningful progression for them. Either they’re lucky enough to work in big tech / finance / and maybe traditional white collar jobs, or they’re just pretty shit outta luck. And the government and powers that be sure don’t care about them. Unions are a pale shadow of what they were in the past. Labor power hasn’t been a meaningful election issue for decades, except for the small Bernie wing. Yeah, this is exactly the situation that people are trying to describe when they use the term “late stage capitalism”. There’s just one tiny problem: it’s not at all an accurate description of the state of our economy or our society. ---
**Author:** ![Kropotkin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kropotkin/32/18045_2.png) [@Kropotkin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kropotkin)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2025, 3:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/late-stage-capitalism/1012725/52 "2025-01-09T15:03:55Z")
> [@bump](#): > > That’s part of the problem right there. It’s GOT a definition, and it’s a strictly economic one. And what is that definition, in your view? Economists have different definitions, ranging from “commerce” to “barter” to “class exploitation” to “self-sustaining growth” and more. If by “strictly economic” we mean something like “value-free,” or “objective,” well, many economists from Milton Friedman to Joan Robinson to Richard Wolff disagree about that. ---
**Author:** ![OldOlds](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/a3d4f5/32.png) [@OldOlds](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OldOlds)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2025, 3:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/late-stage-capitalism/1012725/53 "2025-01-09T15:08:23Z")
I’m inclined to agree. I mean, things like the East India company were capitalist, but there was (AIUI) a lot of involvement by the crown, deciding who could be capitalist and where. Capitalism has probably always existed, but it’s constantly evolving. Perhaps at some point it will evolve into something else? I don’t know. ---
**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2025, 3:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/late-stage-capitalism/1012725/54 "2025-01-09T15:19:26Z")
> [@bump](#): > > And this is different than say… 1890, how? Or say… 1780? Or even 1920? We are much, much, MUCH better off than at those times. > [@bump](#): > > It’s mostly dumb-ass freshman year stuff, but for some reason, grown people are subscribing to this nonsense. I sometimes wonder if it’s the product of Russian and Chinese misinformation- it seems to have sprung up too quickly and too fully formed to be a grassroots set of beliefs. It hasn’t sprung up all that quickly; these are the same ideas that have rattled around since the Occupy Wall Street movement. They’ve never been coherent or well organized, which is why that movement fell apart without accomplishing anything. I do think China is probably amplifying this stuff on TikTok, though. Almost certainly. > [@OldOlds](#): > > But you’re leaving out the _possibility_ that the system, writ large, is worse for most people now than in the past. I am not making this claim. But college debt seems to be worse. Housing seems more unaffordable. Cars have well outpaced inflation. And the gulf between the wealthy (define that as you will; I’d say the top 5-10%) and the rest is said to have grown. These are all valid to an extent and definitely contribute to the zeitgeist feeling. But much of this is either irrelevant or greatly exacerbated by personal choices. Housing and college is harder to afford, perhaps that’s true. But neither is unaffordable… Depending on your choices. I compare my wife and her sister. Both went to college and paid for it themselves, ending up with debt. Both worked in school to help pay that debt. Both got an inheritance shortly after graduation. My wife used hers to pay off the rest of her debt; her sister made _a_ payment towards that debt, but also went to Europe. Since then, my wife and I spent our 20s moving almost every year, living in shitty little towns where we had work. My SIL, meanwhile, spent her 20s living in a ritzy beach town where she paid more rent for her apartment than we paid for our detached home. She’s always had a 40+ minute commute, because she refuses to leave this beach town that’s full of young people, nightlife, and parties. Both my wife and her sister got masters’ degrees. My wife paid for hers with cash, using the savings we’d gotten up to that point. Her sister got a master’s at a much pricier school, and got loans for it; when COVID suspended payments on the loan, I suggested to her that she should continue making the full payment anyways, since the entire amount would go against the principle; she instead went to Europe again. The fact is, my standard of living, and the standard of living expected by most people of my generation, is much higher than the standard of living my parents had when they were my age, or I had when I was my kids’ age. My parents didn’t travel the world nearly as much as my wife and I have, they didn’t have as many TVs and computers and gaming consoles as we do, as a kid I had fewer and cheaper toys than my kids do. If I was willing to live like my parents did, I wouldn’t even need to think about money; I’d have a rapidly growing savings account, or maybe a 2nd house to rent out. But I’m not willing to do that; and most of the people I know of my generation aren’t even willing to make the much more limited sacrifices my wife and I made. ---
**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2025, 3:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/late-stage-capitalism/1012725/55 "2025-01-09T15:20:41Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > The new principle of capitalism is based on finance. You invest your money in buying stocks. You work on raising the price of the stocks and then you make your profits by selling the stocks at a higher price than you paid for them. > > Industrial capitalism was based on the idea of adding new production to the economy. Financial capitalism is based on the idea of moving paper assets around. …what exactly do you think that stocks _are_? ---
**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2025, 3:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/late-stage-capitalism/1012725/56 "2025-01-09T15:22:52Z")
> [@Horatius](#): > > They’re just barely making rent, no way are they going to the movies. And yet, they are subscribed to 11 streaming services and get all their food delivered by Uber Eats. As a young person, I’ve never seen the young people who live the way you guys claim we all live. ---
**Author:** ![Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/half_man_half_wit/32/21766_2.png) [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Half_Man_Half_Wit)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2025, 3:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/late-stage-capitalism/1012725/57 "2025-01-09T15:23:24Z")
> [@DocCathode](#): > > I would argue that this actually matters much less in modern America than in most of human history. Under the feudal systmem […] We are actually living in less egalitarian times now than we did during at least a good part of feudalism ([origin of the graph](https://bigthink.com/the-past/history-of-wealth-inequality/)): [![](https://i.ibb.co/pQrZxgq/Alfani-Piketty-Graph.png) ](https://i.ibb.co/pQrZxgq/Alfani-Piketty-Graph.png) (Naturally, the graph shows data for Europe, more accurately, parts of modern Italy, France, UK and Sweden.) The graph shows the percentage of wealth held by the top 10% across the indicated timespan; it seems like the time before the black plague in the 1350s was at maybe at a marginally higher level of inequality, but otherwise we were better off (by that metric, at least!) until the 1700s, when inequality rose all through the industrial revolution to an all-time high in ~1910 with the age of robber baron capitalism. The two world wars and subsequent social and taxation reforms saw inequality sink to a ~450 year low in 1975 thereafter, with the trend reversing from then on largely thanks to neoliberal reforms in the style of Thatcher and Reagan, granting tax breaks for the rich and lower inheritance tax. Of course, since 2010, when the data of the graph ends, this trend seems to have only accelerated, with e.g. roughly two thirds of all newly created wealth since the COVID pandemic [going to the top 1%](https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/richest-1-bag-nearly-twice-much-wealth-rest-world-put-together-over-past-two-years). ---
**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2025, 3:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/late-stage-capitalism/1012725/58 "2025-01-09T15:28:34Z")
> [@Reply](#): > > Covid was a fascinating glimpse into that situation. People stopped working, government gave them money out of nowhere, evictions were stopped… for years! Somehow the species survived. Wonder how long we could’ve kept that going? What are you _talking_ about? What percentage of people do you think _stopped working_ during COVID? And of those, how many had some kind of stoppage at some point during the pandemic, vs how many just didn’t work for the duration? COVID was a big drag on the economy, especially in sectors like restaurants or entertainment venues. But we didn’t just _shut down the economy_. ---
**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2025, 3:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/late-stage-capitalism/1012725/59 "2025-01-09T15:30:23Z")
> [@Thing.Fish](#): > > For instance, in another thread people are talking about a new streaming app that will demand access to your device’s camera, so that it can shut down and not work for you if it detects that your eyes aren’t focused on the screen during ads. That’s the sort of thing I usually hear the phrase used to describe. Wow! How horrible that such an app would arise in our capitalist system! What is the name of this terrible app? ---
**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2025, 3:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/late-stage-capitalism/1012725/60 "2025-01-09T15:35:36Z")
> [@Thing.Fish](#): > > If you hire me to make hats for $10 per hat and the raw materials plus upkeep for your factory costs $5 per hat, and you’re selling the hats for $20 and keeping the other $5 of profit, then of course you’re fucking me over. The only reason I’m not keeping $15 per hat is that you could afford to buy the factory and raw materials up front, and I couldn’t. You’re adding nothing of real value, you’re just using your privileged economic position to insert yourself as a middleman in the production process to keep making money off my labor forever. What the fuck are you talking about? If I provide the factory and the raw materials, _of course I am producing something of value_. If I wasn’t there, you wouldn’t make any hats. Would society be better off then? And there’s something else of value being provided: assumption of risk. If that’s fall out of fashion a year into my new business and thus it fails, I lose everything I invested in the business, but you get to keep making your stable paycheck for as long as the business remains open; and unlike me, you’re not saddled by any debt when it fails, so you can go make shoes or cloaks or oven mitts at another company instead. > [@Thing.Fish](#): > > (Actually, whether you’re “fucking me over” is in the eye of the beholder. Maybe I’m happy to just make hats and not have to deal with the other hassles of running a business. But, in the technical economic sense of the term, you are by definition _exploiting_ me) No more than you are exploiting my available resources and willingness to assume risk. It’s a mutually beneficial relationship; if you don’t want to take part, you don’t have to. (Unlike a Marxist system where if you don’t want to take part, you end up in a Gulag). [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/late-stage-capitalism/1012725.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/late-stage-capitalism/1012725.md?page=4)