The End of Capitalism: The Creativity Conundrum

Alright: you suffered through two articles on this already. One about the way the Productivity Paradox killed middle America in the demise of blue collar jobs. Another one predicting a similar demise in white collar jobs due to more automation. But surely the arts are the exclusive domain of humans! How could computers possibly create things full of passion, of desire, of humor, of innovation? How could HAL outshine Van Halen? Continue reading

The End of Capitalism: The Academic Delusion

For blue collar workers, the root of all evils was the 1980s. While the world was listening to Madonna and Michael Jackson, wearing giant shoulder pads and holding giant boomboxes over your head, a series of developments crushed into the American Dream like Jaws into a fishing boat. The result was a deep and lasting depression into the heart of America, one that made life outside of large cities precarious and poverty and disillusionment widespread. Continue reading

The End of Capitalism: The Productivity Paradox

It was in the ancient days of the early 70s that I saw and read this book. It was large, thin, and in thick cardboard pages. It was trying to tell us kids how much better the future would be and invoked a word: productivity. It claimed that productivity was growing rapidly, and that we would soon have twice the productivity of a generation before. What that meant was that we could do the same things in half the time, which meant that everybody would be able to work, say, only 20 hours a week and we’d get the same output. Continue reading