It's 2017, and still The Socialist predicts the imminent collapse of Capitalism.

It is right around the corner, just as it has always been, and just as it will always be.

Parts of the United States already resemble the so-called 'Third World', and we have homeless proto-shanty towns popping up all over. A few more nudges in that direction will only guarantee more misery here.

@1 - I do not think he's predicting the collapse of Capitalism. He's predicting the full third-world-ification of the United States. Capitalists have gone global, they have no national affiliations any more, they are transnational elites. Those of us poor sods who are stuck here will see: persistent poverty, infrastructure declines, and a general increase of 'hustling' within a grey- or black-market economy.

Belatedly commenting to applaud this clear-eyed view of Trumponomics, to the extent there is such a thing. This might be better described as Ryanomics, which is just Randonomics, which is just the natural evolution of Reagonomics. Well, whatever I want to call it, I have bookmarked this post for when I need a distillation of where the GOP has been trying to take our economy.

I like how Charles takes the notion of how corporate raiders like Mitt Romney and Bain Capital have tried to strip private enterprises of their accumulated value and applies that to public institutions. I like particularly the use of the term "stripping." Visualize strip mining, or what's left of the landscape after strip mining. Negative externalities aren't just an unfortunate side effect of corporations trying to gain an edge through deregulation, they're part of the business model. Sort of like a bank losing money being part of the bank robber's business model. (And I say this as someone who, unlike Charles, is an unabashed capitalist, whatever that means.)

I'm reminded too of a recent Atlantic story, The Ghost Bosses: "Private-equity firms have been rapidly buying and selling off companies for decades, and workers in Lancaster, Ohio, are living with the consequences."

Speaking of "stripping," perhaps Uber's uber-douche Travis Kalanick can find a way to disrupt and monetize and scale out that industry too while he's at it.

P.S. It's one of the natural laws of the blogosphere. There's no correlation between the quality of a post (in my book) and the number of comments.

Oh, and I was reminded of Travis Kalanick because, well,... I appreciate the mention of "Stealth of Nations" (I hadn't heard of that book) and System D nations and the takedown of the sharing economy and the warning that, if we continue down the current path, we're going to "become another Nigeria." I guess that's one fear that Charles and nutty Iowa Congressman Steve King share, albeit in very, very different senses. 8-o

3, "Economic strip mining" is what the World Bank/IMF have been essentially enabling for years with their "structural adjustment loans" to countries suffering economic trouble. It's possible (although I personally cannot prove it) that the "economic trouble" may have been somewhat engineered to begin with -- economic warfare is a known thing. Thus a country was pushed to the IMF to get loans that required, among other things, interest rate increases of 10-20-30-50-80%, & caused asset bubbles. I can't imagine if the US interest rate jumped to 50%, but it consistently caused "IMF Riots" in the countries affected. It would certainly bring the US economy to a standstill.

Now that the IMF has come under sustained fire for these inhuman policies, and since some countries have stood up & successfully given the IMF the finger (e.g. Argentina, Iceland), things have changed.

However, "strip mine capitalists" have taken the IMFs playbook and are currently applying it to the United States population... causing asset bubbles (housing, citizen debt, student loans), and a lovely recession we've just had.

Trump is now trying to divest of state-owned resources and will privatize anything he can. Fire sale in America!

And the GOP just keep sucking his cock.

The IMF's Four Step Process
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Step One is privatisation - sell-offs of state industries,

Step Two is capital market liberalisation - raise interest rates to 30%, 50% and 80%.

Step Three: market-based pricing - a fancy term for raising prices on food, water and cooking gas.

(Riots happen here. ...and by riots we mean peaceful demonstrations dispersed by bullets, tanks and tear gas)

Step Four: free trade - kicking down barriers to sales in Asia, Latin American and Africa, while barricading US markets against the Third World 's agriculture.

This, in somewhat muted form, it what the US population faces now.

@2, @5, @6, @7

You seem kinda lonely. Did your friends stop pretending to pay attention when you talk to them about this stuff?