"Some people also assumed I was recommending new restrictions on freedoms..."

I never cease to be amazed by the lack of reading comprehension I see demonstrated day after day.

It terrifies me to be cynical than Scott Adams....

We are not facing (just) the end of capitalism - we are looking at the end of Democracy (though these days, it's actually more of a plutocracy by special interest.)

I believe I will live to see the end of the United States. Our debt is too large and our view too entitled to survive. No politician will make the fiscal changes that are required to return the nation to long-term health, because those decisions, like more taxes, less earmarks, and more personal consequences, are highly unpopular, and look really mean on the evening news.

If the status quo continues, the nation will implode financially. We are currently able to function with a deficit and immense national debt because foreign investors are supporting our excess. Eventually, those investors will cut us off, either because they don't trust our ability to pay, or because they have been sucked down with us. At that point, something is going to happen...

I haven't been able to get a clear picture of what comes next - mass poverty leading to revolution? Invasion and occupation by a foreign country? (and if so, which one?) A new form of government/economics not currently in existence? I honestly don't know.

Scott - as a libertarian, I can't believe you don't get it. Capitalism is just fine. It's Socialism that's wacked. We created Social Security, Health Insurance, pensions, 401Ks, and the Great Society, so the boomers figured they didn't HAVE to save. What if we didn't have government assistance programs? What if the boomers saw the elderly die poor rather than be the most comfortable age group. Would they have started saving? You Betcha!

It's actually democracy that failed because the elderly VOTE, which is why we have all the social programs for them.
Will the boomers vote themselves a comfy retirement?

You betcha!
(and no, I'm actually socially liberal myself)
/j

As many here have opined, you are completely off base. All the things you talk about as being "wrong" with capitalism can be directly related to government intervention. Liberty and freedom are more important than protection from our own mistakes. By the way, liberty and freedom are two very different things - if you don't know the difference, ask me and I'll tell you, because the difference is very important.

You don't learn from your successes. You don't get better if you aren't allowed to make a mistake. That goes for people and businesses. Do me a favor, Scott, and get a little better educated, or at least expose yourself to more 'solutions' than "The government will regulate every aspect of our lives." That's what we fought the American Revolution for. That's what our country was founded to do. That is what has made us the greatest country on Earth.

The rest of the world, at least the more successful countries, are moving away from socialism and toward capitalism. Something like 32 countries have moved to a flat tax. Look at what happened in Ireland when they cut their corporate tax rate. Their economy went through the roof. Look at China since they took over Hong Kong and started allowing limited capitalism within their country.

The evidence is all around you, yet you and many others are just ignoring it. Even old Europe is starting to back off from their socialist forms - even France (!!!) Now is the time to push for a resurgence of capitalism, not ever-increasing restrictions on individuals and businesses.

Now we have Obama planning a new New Deal - massive public works projects paid for with massive tax increases and borrowing, that don't do a thing for building the economy. Not to mention socialized medicine - take a look at how well that worked in Hawaii. They put together a plan where all children would be covered by state Medicaid. It lasted for about four months, because everyone who was paying for their own children's health care dropped it (why pay for it if you can get it for free?). It bankrupted the program in a few months, and the state had to drop it.

When Obama does the same thing, he'll just print more money and sell more of our children's future to the Chinese and Arabs. Boy, that sure gives me a warm, fuzzy feeling. Be glad you don't have kids, Scott, because they are going to have to somehow pay off the debt their parents are running up.

Do me a favor, Scott. Read P. J. O'Rourke's book, "Eat the Rich." Take a look at the examples he gives of four different countries and how their economies compare with each other, and then let us know what you think. Even though it was written a few years ago, it is still instructive. You can get it at the library if you don't want to buy it - or I'll loan you my copy.

If you really lean libertarian, then you should begin thinking (and posting) about how to get government out of our lives and their hands out of our wallets. That would be a far better use of your vast intellect and free time. Since 'free' is a word we're going to be hearing less and less of.

I have a very simple solution. Just make all financial accounts read accessible to the public at large on the internet. Of all induhviduals, corruporations, guvernmints. Worldwide. No exceptions.

I was thinking 2 measures that would be radical and maybe restore some agility in the market. The first one is to only allow humans to own shares, no legal entity could be entitled to own other !$%*!$%*! The second one would be to limit the size of companies to avoid the huge company that we have now. We could do this by law or by a tax on the size of the company.

The idea is to force smaller player in the market and to allow more diverse economic eco-system with more death but also more birth of companies.

A little restriction could be nice. But there's one thing that will (thankfully) delay your vision. Retiring at 65 will no longer become a viable option. We will need to put our seniors to work. I always thought there was something strange about people saying "I'm old, so I don't need to work anymore."
This would require anti-senior changes in legislation, which would be political suicide because seniors comprise so much of the voting population. Uh... How do we get around that?

stop mislabelling your premises.
when were societal restrictions, bailouts, social security were all part of capitalism?
Its socialism that you have been experiencing for several years now. (come to India to see its full range and see how far it has supposedly progressed since its independence..... vaccinate urself before u land here)

You dint make the connection between government slowly entering different kind of restrictions to something that will affect your freedom in future. Maybe you thought it will just go away. Maybe you though it is only a slight raise in taxes at start and that will be it. You thought you could anyway go for the cruise trip you planned for or your long cherished simple luxuries are still affordable. You underestimated the influence that can be had on your freedom. Did you understand freedom?? Its time to pay back for the ignorance and see your wealth(built on a creative lifestyle) dissolve away... Yes it will. Make no mistake.

Scott: "When your behavior raises my taxes it becomes my business."

You do realize the Pandora's Box you just opened, don't you? That statement is downright creepy dude. I don't even want to start thinking up all the ways that argument could be abused.

Why not just demand that government lower taxes so we can all stay out of each others' business? We have a voice in our government. If enough people demand it, it will happen. Demand that the government stop trying to fix everything and let us do it. I realize this is just a thought experiment, but we just had a major candidate who was saying just that. The only reason McCain lost was because he was ugly and old. Let's find some young, handsome person who believes the same thing and get him elected.

3. The restrictions will be created and controlled by the people that are responsible for todays problems.

"... but it probably involves preventing individuals from being as self-destructive as they would prefer."
Actually, what we really need is something popularly self-destructive that ultimately benefits society... like Soylent Green.
For some strange reason, our society has become restriction/rationing adverse... which appears to be a historical anomaly - "we" seemed to be able to come together fairly well during WWII (I wasn't there, but the attitude of how special it was to have steak once a week rubbed off).
Oh, and there's absolutely NO reason to tell "banks they couldn't make billion-dollar loans to the homeless". This is the very basis on which this country was built - when Son of Farmer Joe goes into the bank and asks for a loan to buy a farm, seed and/or a tractor. Some of these things work out, some don't. What needs to be made illegal is the re-selling of obfuscated "liar loans" with a AAA rating. There's nothing wrong with taking some risks - with risk comes reward (or failure).

Sounds like the future of the US is Canada. Come...joooin usssss {insert crazy-eyed children of the corn emoticon here}

I understood your previous post to mean that a different economics and incentives system would supplant capitalism -- something different like communism (communism on paper, since communism in practice still had a lot of capitalist elements).

Now, you seem to be indicating that capitalism v1.0 failed because capitalist programs like social security, public health care, mortgage bailouts, and such are bankrupting the country and affecting your prosperity. I'm a little confused on that premise, since you're ultimately complaining about socialist systems within our not-so-capitalistic government that have crept into our economy... It's not really the capitalism that is killing us, so much as the socialism.

also, I wouldn't call our current system capitalism v1.0, since capitalism has been revised several times, already, to avoid various types of monopoly which already emerged as built-in points-of-failures in a "pure" capitalism.

You've unwittingly described the problem as "not enough capitalism".

People exiting the workforce to live on social security and health benefits... These are public resources. They are inheritly uncapitalistic.

This is a problem with socialism; if there was MORE capitalism, people who didn't save for their own retirement wouldn't retire. Problem solved.

Have you considered that maybe our concept of retiring at 65 isn't compatible with our life expectancy anymore?

If say new restrictions on spending behaviors come to pass, they will probably be lifted shortly after the last non productive deadbeat group of boomers become soylent green and the rest of us eternals can get on with the business of enjoying ourselves and our wealth and not supporting these whiny layabouts.

How do you survive in capitalism? By working, and being paid for it by the folks around you.

How do you do better in capitalism? By being paid more for the same work (more money, same effort).

How do you win in capitalism? By doing no work and being paid for it.

Why does capitalism have problems? Because scams and cons are the ultimate expression of how the rules work. *shrug* Capitalists win by impoverishing the people around them (after all, if they are not impoverished then inflation ensures that the Capitalist did all of that work for nothing - you can't just have everyone getting richer at the same rate) - Capitalism: it creates losers as well as winners - and you wouldn't want to meet many of the winners...

Capitalism was working fine until crooks turned it into a pyramid scheme. Well, actually it was never perfect, that's what regulation and law was for, so thirteen year olds weren't working thirteen hours a day in a coal mine getting their fingers sliced, but were in school.
Baby boomers will retire and live with their working kids (now adults) who will feed them and reduce the need for social security and pensions. Government will incentivize getting married and having kids so people can combine their income and boost the economy, because people will live in closer communties with families less spread out. Boomers can all become novelists or painters or something - something that's not labor that takes up 10 hours a day, but people can pay for to boost the economy. Gas will get expensive again and the phrase "finish all the food on your plate" will make a big comeback. People will live in closer communities. Solar panels on all roofs.
Either that or we'll continue to be isolated, misrable slobs in a plastic wasteland.

I don't think anything that would work will replace the current system, because something that would work would be a much more severe change than just a few new restrictions *within* the current system.

To me it looks like the only logical tax structure is based on occupancy of land and use of public land. Money is an unlimited abstract concept, easily hidden, hard to tax neatly. But you can't hide how big your house is, you can't hide how many roads you drive on, and you can't hide *where* your land-boundaries are (or they don't work!)

I made up a model of this some years ago, but I discovered years later that smart people before me had proposed basically the same thing (and I've framed it *very* basically, for obvious reasons). It's called Georgism, and wikipedia has details (my implementation would be a little more 'free market', unintuitively). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism

The other thing that would be a huge change that would make a positive difference, is eliminating any sort of interest-bearing loans. Unfortunately attempting that would just lead to a big loan black market with even worse interest rates, and the proceeds going to, er, *overt* criminals instead of subtle ones. Maybe that's still better.