from industrial capitalism to financial capitalism

Credit cards have been only one piece of the historically massive shift in the organization of our economy, and thus of our society, from industrial capitalism to financial capitalism. Nixon's ending of the gold standard in 1971 was another indicator of that shift. (Conservatives today rant about the shift from "real" money to "fiat" money, instead of focussing on the perversion of capitalism that widespread credit and over-expanded financial markets constitute. Socialists rant about the loss of connection between money and its real basis, labor, but only sometimes concern themselves with the social compact at the root of all social order and its necessary concommitants, interpersonal trust and the interpersonal infrastructure that is social capital. These are matters of economic philosophy that are really worth getting your heads around because they are at the root of the crisis of Western civilization. But as with all crisis-cores, they are heavily masked by smokescreens, mirrors, and fireworks.)

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