# Is a return to capitalism possible?
Date: 2025-08-30

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### Is a return to capitalism possible?

Currently America exists in a state of fascistic chaos, but unfortunately it will take more than the end of Trump to create any kind of normality.

Let’s pretend we had the authority to reinstate regulation, break up monopolies, reduce wealth inequality, and nationalize industries like health care and incarceration. Would even all of that turn back the clock from “late-stage capitalism” to something more recognizable as ordered governance and markets in harmony?

There are many reasons to be skeptical:

* Restoring financial order doesn’t by itself roll back the pollution causing climate change.
* Automation may have already removed too many forms of human labor without creating new ones.

![John Maynard Keynes predicted technological unemployment for the 21st century. Photograph: Corbis](https://disrael.github.io/blogs/assets/is-a-return-to-capitalism-possible-912a44a23b.png)
*John Maynard Keynes predicted technological unemployment for the 21st century. Photograph: Corbis*

* Restoring financial order may or may not restore birth rates.
* Much of technological research was historically unregulated and that won’t work in a world where the possible keeps expanding. It’s unclear whether regulated technology and traditional capitalism can coexist. The easiest way to innovate is to create something opioid like and take the profit while ignoring the fallout.
* Assuming even the dangers of technological research are conquered, the extremely high level of long term funding necessary to keep capitalism’s innovations going are daunting. It’s a level of funding only the central government can achieve but it will be politically infeasible to pour in that much money and then just turn over the result to oligarchs.
* The winner take all nature of a globalized economy makes preventing oligarchy extremely difficult.
* Meritocracy maybe untenable in an ever more complex world. When innovation swings from requiring the sweat of thousands to the imagination of thousands, it’s harder and harder to ascribe merit to a small group at the top of a hierarchy.

Trump’s tariffs are just one small example of why a return to capitalism maybe naive. Trump imagines that tariffs will restore the world of the McKinley Tariff of 1890, but 19th century regulation alone can’t do that.

The same problem faces any attempt to return to 20th century capitalism. The arrow of time rarely retreats no matter how nostalgic people are.

The same problem also faces attempts to return to a slightly modified 20th century capitalism. 20th century capitalism becomes more dated all the time and so any simple tweak to it will be unlikely to hold for long.

Trump’s election can be seen as one such tweak. If we just put in an ultra right wing president then we can “make America great again”. Electing Trump is one form of burying your head in the sand, but even more complex and reasonable capitalism reform schemes might fail.

A return to capitalism maybe possible, but we cannot have all of our eggs in that basket. American politics cannot be allowed to devolve into imaginary time machine battles between politicians promising a return to the late 19th century and politicians promising a return to the late 20th century.