I've been thinking about how excess capitalism erodes trust. I believe capitalism is important and powerful, but it does cause people to be constantly fighting and trying to destroy each other. Plus, trust doesn't show up on a balance sheet - so might as well erode that to get some cash. Capitalism leads to Apple maintaining a 30% App Store take rate (thus eroding trust and perhaps sinking the launch of Vision Pro), profitable tech companies doing layoffs (thus eroding trust but increasing profits further), and military contractors building better killing tools (thus eroding trust but making more money). Perhaps, in an age where we have the technology to feed everybody in the world, we need to increase the societal guardrails to make people's lives more stable - and thus increase trust.
Apparently Maslo updated his eponymous pyramid of needs before his death to add "Self-transendence" above "self-actualization" [1], which you could interpret as "moving from only caring about yourself to caring about other people." I think there's an angle here where perhaps the USA as a whole is stuck on "self-actualization", i.e. caring only about each person and individual success, and is failing to have a shared identity where people care about each other.
If we don't solve our trust problem, I think people will stop having kids in the USA and we'll eventually end up like Japan - in population decline and having all the associated economic problems with it. I think that can be directly be linked to excess capitalism - if we focus so much on making money, then we don't have time (or stability or resources) to raise the next generation.
It's not just Capitalism, it's a symptom of all hierarchies. Hierarchies are a social contract, existing only so long as enough people are willing to participate. That will manifests differently at different layers of the hierarchy, with the downtrodden base class for instance mostly participating out of a resigned faith in the hierarchy's inevitability, but for those in the middle, the trust that their ongoing participation will be rewarded with both a share of the spoils of the hierarchy (extracted from the bottom classes) and the opportunity to advance up the hierarchy is CRUCIAL in maintaining the structure.
The fatal flaw in all this is that the hierarchies provide perverse incentives at every level to hoard the benefits of participation to oneself. It's a tragedy of the commons situation, where any given individuals misbehavior in supporting the system is unlikely to break it, but if everyone does it absolutely will be shattered.
Apparently Maslo updated his eponymous pyramid of needs before his death to add "Self-transendence" above "self-actualization" [1], which you could interpret as "moving from only caring about yourself to caring about other people." I think there's an angle here where perhaps the USA as a whole is stuck on "self-actualization", i.e. caring only about each person and individual success, and is failing to have a shared identity where people care about each other.
If we don't solve our trust problem, I think people will stop having kids in the USA and we'll eventually end up like Japan - in population decline and having all the associated economic problems with it. I think that can be directly be linked to excess capitalism - if we focus so much on making money, then we don't have time (or stability or resources) to raise the next generation.
[1] https://bigthink.com/neuropsych/maslow-self-transcendence/