[p2p-research] Prospect Magazine: After Capitalism

[Ryan Lanham]

Prospect Magazine out of the UK has an interesting current article
discussing the financial system demise and its implications.  The article is
by *Geoff Mulgan.*

http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/article_details.php?id=10680

I've long wondered how organizations can develop and maintain the
sustainable cashflows necessary to support a LT debt-based economy.  It
seems a lot of people are starting to think this way or to give voice to
doubts long held.  I understand creative destruction and all that, but
velocity is such that creative destruction happens now in months not
decades.  Can the system support the investment and capital necessary to
cycle at such accelerated rates?  Globalization feeds the acceleration
because it isn't a company down the street alone one faces but one in
Shanghai, one in Singapore, one in Ankara, and two in Finland as well as one
in Eugene, Oregon and one in Pittsburgh.

State-sponsored capitalism a la China (or even Finland) seems to be the
emerging model for coping.  Isn't that what Geithner is running?  State
sponsored capitalism in the financial sector?  Ironically, it is the alleged
socialist countries in Europe that seem to be willing to let manufacturing
institutions die--like the auto industry.

I remember hearing Carly Fiorina give a talk once in Chicago where she
emphasized HP's incredible rate of product development cycling.  Is that the
whole world now?  If so, do we just accept the backblast of lots of failures
or is some sort of global regulation of velocity inevitable?  Who would opt
out voluntarily?  That would be national suicide...and yet unbridled
acceleration seems to be collective suicide, or as a short stop, state
capitalism.

Ryan Lanham
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