> That masks important regional differences. Asia has been anything but
> stagnant. Capitalism hadn't ever seen anything like the Japan-Korea-China
> serial booms before 1950, had it?
There's another way of looking at it. Maybe the success of Japan-Korea-China is one of the main symptoms of the problem the system is facing. The system "wants" a free flow of goods and therefore an international division of labor. But nationalists in Japan-Korea-China wanted to build a full production set of their own. The "system" was unable or unwilling to block Asia from building their own production capacity during the Cold War. But meanwhile, the US and Europe didn't want to give up their own production of lucrative high-end products. The result is too much capacity in the world. The only possible outcomes are (1) an end to the free flow of goods; Asia produces for the Asians, America for Americans, etc; or (2) a nasty shakeout where one side or the other is forced to shut down its production capacity.
Seth