If capitalism is to ever end I think it will because some kind of technological progress will have made it redundant. What that technology will be, I have no idea.

The free market will never die. Some ugly, fact, repulsive scumbag (Putin or Thucy for example) will want sex 1,000 years in the future and will need to find someone to pay $1,000,000 just for a peep show and it will happen because the free market never will vanish ever from human society.

God help us all if Thucy survives into the next millenium.

Capitalism is already dead. Its corpse has been rotting since the 1970s. Capitalist countries can't survive on their merits and own production, but live off the backs of future generations. As the developing countries continue to grow and increase their living standards, there will be ever more increased pressure on the rich countries to "remain competitive". That means draconian immigration policies, union busting, and wage cuts. This will intensify the struggle and eventually, the ruling class and their sham political systems will crumble underneath their own dead weight.

I bet we'll be able to tell you what it looks like after it happens.

The historical experience of the 20th centuries and the numerous, I guess "full-on" communist "experiments" in governance means that elements of the free market/capitalism will likely remain in any potential economic system for the rest of human existence. That is, the horribly failed experiences of long-term complete socialist, nationalized economies (China before reforms, 1989-1991 collapse of Soviet Union and satellite countries) have demonstrated that no thoroughly socialist economy can survive in the long-term. However, there really are not many (if any) thoroughly (or even mostly) free-market-oriented countries in the world today; the U.S. , for example, has been a "mixed economy" since at least the 1960s, but perhaps even earlier dates like the 1930s or the institution of the Federal Reserve Act. The way events are currently proceeding, the free-market/capitalism elements will not all end in practice, but become a bastardized form of corporatism/fascism; the likelihood of most countries of the world turing into heavily statist welfare states actually appears dim, given the vast amount of sovereign debt currently associated with this sort of governance and economic organization.

Most of that sovereign debt woudldn't be an issue at all if not for the currency union.

True high social spending allowed the build up of sovereign debt in a number of EU countries. However the economic downturn could have been addressed with currency devaluation resulting in a lower relative cost for employment and boost to exports.

The eurozone pooling of sovereignty took this option away from individual nations. How did Icelands aocial spending affect it's sovereign debt???

^^I don't want to butt into this thread, because I disagree with a lot said, but I just want to put a factoid out on what orathaic said. Iceland wouldn't have had any sovereign debt crisis had its banks not gone into a debt that was bigger than the country's GDP. I think the top two or three banks made bad loans to an amount more than Iceland's GDP, and when Iceland bailed them out (to save the nation's deposits) it went into a debt crisis. Not a failure of capitalism, a failure of banking and regulation

Economics is the study of scarcity. Economics will be a profession as long as resources remain scarce.

However if we have enough resources to give everyone a super computer, phone, food, mansion etc. then economics will no longer exist.

However I would argue that that day will never come, singularity does not exist.

My thought on the end of capitalism. Capitalism will always be around as long as two ideas are competing with each other and we don't have the resources to do everything.

And besides, wouldn't getting everything you wanted and having no problems be boring?

I hate to live in a world where no change was needed...

about the European debt crisis:
Public Debt of Greece:
2000: 103%
2007: 107%
2008: 113%
2009: 129%

Before the recession Greece was no running large recessions, the fault of the debt crisis was the banking sector for giving people loans they couldn't pay back.

Hell in 2007 the US debt to GDP ratio was ~60%, now its 103%.

The republicans are wrong to think that the financial crisis was caused by a government living beyond its means.

However the democrats are wrong for thinking taxing and regulated the financial sector will get us out of it.

The reality is a poorly regulated financial sector caused this crisis, but further regulations and taxes on them wont get us out of it.

For example the Buffet tax is suppose to raising $48 billion over the next 10 years, so 10 years of taxing to fund the deficit for 11 days.

On top of that the Democrats are wrong for thinking more regulation = better regulation and the republicans are wrong for thinking no regulation = better regulation.

The financial sector was poorly regulated, not over or under regulated.

The reason why the financial crisis happened was because everyone thought that the financial practices bringing in massive profits in the 90s and earlier 2000s was sustainable, which is was for only as long as housing prices were increasing, which many believed could be sustainable, due to rising populations and decreasing space.

The severity of the financial crisis in 2008 was one that hadn't been seen since the great depression.

Thats why I question the need for stuff like the dodd-frank act.

Obviously every bank now knows the risk of mortgage back securities, so regulating or banning them would cost banks more then it would help them.

Some regulation is good, we need a central bank, we need fiat money backed by a central government, we need a banking system which can't lend more then a certain percentage of its saving. But we can do these regulations simply, a law regulated the issuing of loans doesn't need to be 848 pages long and require banks to fill out paper work answering 383 questions about the loan in order to do so.

Financing growth through debt is what made the west so economically strong, and just because it fell down once doesn't mean we can't try again. The banking sector definitely learnt its lesson in 2008, so we don't need to further punish it to inflict further pain.

My Finance textbook's second addition was published in 2007, it talked about how amazing mortgage backed securities were in financing debt and how they were perfectly safe.

The 5th addition published in 2011, says the exact opposite of them.

Corporate culture has evolved as a result of the recession and the government is wrong for thinking it hasn't.

"Before the recession Greece was no running large recessions, the fault of the debt crisis was the banking sector for giving people loans they couldn't pay back. "
*Greece was not running large deficits...

'The banking sector definitely learnt its lesson in 2008, so we don't need to further punish it to inflict further pain.' - i agree with most of what you said, how and ever. company directors are legally responsible to their shareholders, and it is entirely possible for their share-holders to think only of the short term - but it is more likely the directors will focus on short term profits and bonuses which appear to be giving their shareholders a great deal. until they fail.

It seems like it will continue to be very difficult to prove that a director was criminally negligent with the money invested, and as such I don't see how any easy route will prevent history from repeating itself - at least within a capitalist system similar to the present one.

Though I agree with you that the financial industry has learned. That doesn't mean this lesson will stay with them. I suspect it will eventually be forgotten... partly because many people don't really understand what happened.

And the point i was trying to make with regard to Iceland was that it was in a very different position as compared to greece.

Iceland let banks fail and refused to put taxpayers on the hook.
Cheers to Iceland!
The United States should have paid out the FDIC insurance and let everything else go.
People want to tax the rich now.
Who lost money in Iceland? The rich investors in banks who made stupid investments.
Screw every single individual who makes a bad investment be it in your house or in a bank.
You are responsible for your own actions.
Iceland lived it!