Opinion (The Guardian): “There has always been a tension at the heart of capitalism. Although it is the best wealth-creating mechanism we’ve made, it can’t be left to its own devices. Its self-regulating properties, contrary to the efforts of generations of economists trying to prove otherwise, are weak.

“It needs embedded countervailing power – effective trade unions, law and public action – to keep it honest and sustain the demand off which it feeds. Above all, it needs an ordered international framework of law, finance and trade in which it can do deals and business. It certainly can’t invent one itself. The mayhem in the financial markets over the last fortnight is the result of confronting this tension. The oil price collapse should be good news. It makes everything cheaper. It puts purchasing power in the hands of business and consumers elsewhere in the world who have a greater propensity to spend than most oil-producing countries. A low oil price historically presages economic good times. Instead, the markets are panicking.

“They are panicking because what is driving the lower oil price is global disorder, which capitalism is powerless to correct. Indeed, it is capitalism running amok that is one of the reasons for the disorder. Profits as a share of national income in Britain and the US touch all-time highs; wages touch an all-time low as the power of organised labour diminishes and the gig economy of short-term contracts takes hold. The excesses of the rich, digging underground basements to house swimming pools, cinemas and lavish gyms, sit alongside the travails of the new middle-class poor. These are no longer able to secure themselves decent pensions and their gig-economy children defer starting families because of the financial pressures.

“It’s clear what needs to happen. There needs to be wholesale change in economic thinking. Forces in world labour markets – new forms of 21^st-century trade unionism – need to be strengthened. The power of financial markets needs to be constrained. Credit growth needs to be managed by direct controls on the growth of bank balance sheets and banks need to be weaned off the financial casino they have built. Great companies need to be allowed to purpose themselves around creating value rather than dancing to the interests of disengaged shareholders.”

My Comment: Capitalism cannot restrict itself—we see it in the way it is destroys the middle class, from which it is powered. Human greed has no limit because instinctively inherent in his nature, a person wants to exploit others down to nothing. He can stop himself only when everyone will become his slaves; their number will be reduced to a minimum, and he will annihilate the rest. After all with the technology of today there is no reason for the existence of 6 out of 7 billion people. That’s what he will seek.

Salvation will come only with the education of the population in a manner that doesn’t arouse antagonism and prohibitions, but awakens a higher positive power that will influence the human mind and will transform it into inclusion of two forces, the “old” negative egoistic force and a “new” positive altruistic force, the power of bestowal and love. Otherwise we can expect the first scenario.
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