Crawford, Graetz, Shapiro, and Dalio are all making the same argument: capitalism needs checks and balances to succeed in the long run. In the fields of technology, public policy, and monetary policy, capital has absolutely trumped the individual over the last 30 years, wrecking havoc on both people and the environment. Success has disconnected elites from their local community and to one another, with devastating consequences on posterity, democracy, and the wellbeing of the overall society. After a strange period of relative economic equality in the mid-20th century -- at both the height of American power and the Soviet experiment -- the world has fallen back into the more typical, pre-19th century pattern of instability, mass technological disruption, inequality, and well-defined class structures. This trend, I have come to realize, may be impossible to reverse. Like Dalio argues, America has become too successful for its own good, and lacking a unified and focused political mission. Weak and aging leadership, endless money-printing, and an over-reliance on technology over community, become the social norm; only a long, sustained effort by individual actors to reclaim their agency and authority over impersonal systems, can reverse the course.
Reforming Capitalism
1. Self-Improvement
Systems are difficult to change, but you can change yourself. Changing capitalism should start with reforming your own relationship with it, and learning how to control it instead of having it control you. I believe this means having a basic education in personal accounting and finance, and more importantly to live below your means. If the reality is that capitalism is the only choice we have, then we must face reality as it is and educate ourselves, instead of wishing it to go away. "All knowledge is self-knowledge." Self-improvement should be a virtue.
2. Taxation and Anti-Trust
30 years of mergers and acquisitions and deregulation have led to a brittle marketplace in the US, dominated by a small number of corporate titans and conglomerates who face little to no competition. Armed with lawyers and technologists, and soon AI, capital has outsmarted the individual and created high barriers to entry in all industries -- food, technology, government, airlines, logistics, etc. Over time, this will make the U.S. economy less competitive and less innovative, if it has not already. Against the odds, public officials must make courageous decisions to tax society's winners proportionately and break up monopolies -- or risk long-term stagnation and "a changing world order".
3. Liberal Arts/Technical Education and Immigration
New people and ideas are the lifeblood of capitalism -- they provide the seeds for new products, new businesses, new customers, and new prosperity. To "manufacture" new ideas, Americans must invest in both liberal arts education -- to counter against an amoral technocratic society -- and also in STEM -- to counter against a technically illiterate workforce. To bring in new people and new ideas, the US must loosen immigration restrictions and lower the barrier for entry for skilled and motivated future citizens, instead of protecting incumbents only.