Right, I get it. Great success. Sure, that rise in private wealth (as always overwhelmingly favouring the elites) may have been built on the backs of millions effectively being treated as industrial slaves and the effects on the environment have been catastrophic - but hey, "raised standards of wealth".

Reducing taxes on the rich, allowing super PACS, and so on, are what we shouldn't have done in the 80's.

Yeah, that's kind of like saying that a monarchy would be a great way to run things if only it didn't rely so much on the king not abusing his position of power. Yeah, maybe, but that's kind of the point. Just like capitalism unleashed leading to plutocrats influencing legislation in their favour is not just some weird coincidence.

Except it really isn't, thanks to that globalization, nations not only fear nuclear war, but cutting themselves off from the world cripples their economies. Look at what has happened to Russia.

Who gives a fuck once the economic system begins imploding for real, anyway? War never stopped being wildly profitable, a great way to distract populations from domestic issues and generally a nice method of turning saturated markets into booming (re-)building opportunities. Sure, MAD still is a thing and I don't expect any WW2 style full scale land invasions. Don't need those for a good war, though.

I'm entirely fed up with the whole growth paradigm. It's a scam we've all bought into. Have fun with those rising standards of wealth. Meanwhile, the indicators showing that limitless growth on a finite planet, based on cheap (and toxic) energy, was a ridiculous idea to begin with keep getting harder to ignore. I'm sure those who still buy into the capitalist story at this point are going to continue to do so anyway.

Growth of production or GDP or median wealth? Screw the growth paradigm. This lunacy is threatening our survival as a species. Success isn't growth of material wealth, success is still being around to argue about this 20, 50 or 100 years from now , as a species. If that means drastically changing our definitions of economic success, maybe to be based on "not fucking up our ecological niche" instead of "racing towards the cliff faster", I'm kind of all for that. Assuming it isn't too late anyway, which it well may be, in which case... party on, I guess.