CHANGE IS COMING WHETHER WE WANT IT OR NOT

This statement is true because of the inherent contradictions of this economy. Those contradictions will bring it down no matter what reforms are attempted. 

The contradictions revolve around several quite absurd factors that now make up electrified Capitalism.

It is certainly true that the abundance of things that vastly more efficient production has provided allows for a bewildering array of purchase choices. 
The problem for this improved producing engine is not that it doesn't churn out lots of new things (which can do more than ever before), but that the system can't both pay enough across the board to keep consumption going, while still providing the sufficiently fat profit margins owners of capital demand. 

The global matrix of total productive potential is so large, and always growing, that it forces an insane spiral of increasing competition. A cycle played out so that the players can maintain the hope that they can win the game of market advantage. As such, pretty much the only place left to cut costs are in the area of wet ware; you either use less of it, and/or you pay what you do use less. And therein lies the rub; the impossibility of having a tremendous supply side, and an impoverished demand side at the same time.

That would be bad enough, but then you have two other factors that are also at play here. The insane, totally saturating environment of engineered message that forever screams out BUY! As well as the impossibility of having livelihoods based on jobs whose only justification for existence is to make things to be purchased. Not only does this have the already described economic contradiction, it assumes a posture of resource consumption that can be sustained indefinitely; even as that consumption rate continues to increase.

That engineered message environment is part and parcel of not only why every part of our mental life is ever more screwed with, it is also why we have made such a complete disaster out of the idea of representative Democracy. 

I mean seriously? Believable representation in the age of super virtualized facade? If that's not like the oxymoron of "Reality TV" then I don't know what is.

The bottom line here is that what we have now is not only driving us insane, it is fundamentally unstable as an objective processing system. There are so many growing contradictions, both within and without, that there is absolutely no way it can sustain itself by any other means than to become the most authoritarian, and repressive kind of enforced governance we've ever seen. There is simply no other way it can survive.

We have a choice as to how we will confront the change that is coming. That choice boils down to whether we're willing to demand an alternative to Capitalism, or just wait to see which form of really unpleasant we're going to be forced to deal with.

#CapitalismIsObsolete

The Salon article:

  

7 facts that show the American dream is dead