Sunday 4th May

The nature of Capitalism is changing all the time; where once it was a sort of Wild West of opportunists who ‘capitalised’ on a certain market shortage, or speculated and got lucky, now it is highly organized and has become a vast behemoth.   And it is getting worse.  At one time it was just the ‘West’, Europeans and then Americans who became involved.  With the fall of Communism, Russia suddenly became the land of opportunity and huge fortunes were made from basically stealing State Assets. A similar thing was happening, but to a lesser degree, in Europe as Steel, Coal, Rail, Telecoms and Utilities were all sold off.

Then Around the turn of the Century China suddenly became liberated and Capitalists sprung up there and now there is a great rush as India, South America and Africa are becoming developed.  And along with that development comes both poverty and immense wealth which is concentrated in just a few hands.

And where will it all end one wonders.  We are back in a phase of Capitalism where wealth for those with Assets is increasing at 7% or more per year where wealth for ordinary people, that is the difference between income and prices had been diminishing or at the best just keeping level.  All of my life up to about 6 years ago I was in the ascendant, one felt positive; life would get better, one would become wealthier, ones standard of living would increase year on year.  All that has stopped now.

Whether Capitalism can correct this or is happy for it to continue on the present path I am not sure.  The logic for every company is to make more and more profit, one sure way is to produce more with less workers.  So the temptation to mechanise, to automate processes is very desirable from an individual company’s point of view.  However if more and more companies do this than there will be fewer and fewer consumers to buy the products of Capitalism, and where will that lead us?  It is quite possible that in fifty years time Britain and large parts of Europe will be very poor and Africa and India very rich.  Who knows, the only thing certain is that unless things change radically the super rich will get even richer faster and faster.