Jakov wrote:I went to a hackerspace a few days ago and saw their 3D printers. They are very cool, and relevant to the whole automation-undermining-capitalism themes in this thread.

The truth is that technology has already greatly undermined capitalist economcs, which appear to be barely functioning right round the world outside of nations like China, India, and Brazil, and soon perhaps Indonesia. These counries can make thir capitaist economies work because in effect they're still in the 1950's and have a very long way togo before they reach the kinds of conditions we find in Western economies, which are saturated with goods and in debt up to their ears and in which all sort and manner of devious (and often illegal) banking practices that make huge sums just by manipulating numbers. And, they are left to get away with it.

I don't think any Western economy will survive much longer before they collapse by the sheer weight of their income inequalities, stagnant middle income wages and, in the US, a Godawful healthcare system. They might survive as ongoing entities if they changed up their economies to minimal-growth sustainable models, but I don't think they will. They'll go down in chaos first.

Is capitalism on the decline in Australia?

I think the commonality between Europe and America is that their central banks have been awful. The ECB is way worse than the Fed, and as such Europe's situation is much worse in many ways. Australia has a great central bank and hasn't had a recession in something like 20+ years.