Capitalism's rate of decay (Communication)

[Brad Mayer]

As much as I would dearly love to see the United States of America develop 
ever less secure, ever more porous borders, until it dissolves altogether, 
alas it - and much more besides - appears to wants to hang around as 
something more than a "temporary masking factor".  It certainly won't last 
as an _eternal_ factor, though.  The real question is, how is capital to 
continue without the US hegemony, or even with a much weakened US?  Imagine 
- in the absence of an _alternative_ - Kosovos and Palestines sprouting 
around the world.  Not conducive to the expansion of capital, especially to 
poorer countries, either

It is the same with the question of "absolute immiseration" (of the 
proletariat) or "imminent collapse" of capitalism.  Both can be 
demonstrated possible in theory, but real probabilities of both are very, 
very small in practice.  I would suggest the same is true with a capitalism 
without the US, and many other "extraneous factors".

-Brad Mayer

At 10:02 AM 8/18/01 -0400, you wrote:
>At 9:30 AM -0700 8/17/01, Brad DeLong wrote in a thread titled "A
>long way to go still.......":
> >The hope was that opening up international capital markets would
> >make it easier for poor countries to finance industrialization. But
> >as we sit here and look at the United States's $250 billion plus
> >annual trade deficit, it seems that something has gone very wrong.
> >In the aggregate, capital is not flowing from rich countries to poor
> >countries, but from everywhere else to the United States.
> >
> >There are a number of theories suggesting that the long-run dominant
> >tendency is for open capital flows to cascade from rich to poor, and
> >that this tendency has been masked over the past two decades by
> >temporary factors. But with each year that passes, such theories
> >become less and less credible...
>
>For once, Brad Mayer & Brad DeLong sound as if they are on the same
>wavelength.  ;-)
>
>Yoshie