Next meta-step - How robust is democratic capitalism when it has less output legitimacy to lean on, and must lean more to process legitimacy?
2026: me, timid, behind schedule: *anxiously cites volumes of work across multiple disciplines for even basic claims about 'the literature'*
1986: chad Galen Strawson, self-assured, prolific: *cites exactly two philosophers. first endnote, verbatim: "Dogs, dolphins, human beings, Martians, etc."
With the IRA the Biden Administration tried market-based carbon emissions reduction while the Trump administration is pursuing a degrowth strategy instead. RIP Paul Ehrlich you'd love this shit.
Were we all too cruel to that schlocky ending of Mass Effect 3?
Vladimir Putin would like us to reassess.
'Capitalism is the best method we have for marrying up broad-based productivity that fulfills human flourishing and stabilises democratic societies, while also managing elite resource and power bargains with low(ish) costs'
Vs
'Oh no, I've looked outside in the 2020's'
Caveats:
- There are a bunch of different ways to slice subsidy numbers.
- The scale of what China did and is doing is not very reproducible
- Especially if you start further up the value chain (or with mittelstand path dependency on the combustion engine, for example)
But, all in all: Yeppppp.
To go even more meta on this great point:
If capitalism is the attempt at the harnessing and governance of 'stuff that you can get *rich* peddling' - then our capitalism as experienced is increasingly
a) sick, and
b) counter to stable mass democracy