An interesting question is as to the inevitability of capitalism – or something very much like it – in any hyper-inflating socioeconomic (and by extension, geopolitical) referential space. That is to say: are there senses in which the natural bias towards autonomously self-optimising information and energy-processing systems – as manifest through and as human civilisation(s) – must always pass through these kinds of functional (industrial, technological) and symbolic (information, currency/economic) phase transition?
Given enough time, technological innovation and the development of sufficient population mass-density, would this kind of socioeconomic systemic waypoint (and it’s many antitheses) have proven itself inevitable?Capitalism as a distributed, functional artefact is not unique in the sense that if we ran the complex program of Global Civilisation 1.0 again we would very likely end up with similar organisational patterns and symmetries, waypoints on the path to something else.
We all too easily and often consider what already exists (as our existential context) as being normative and necessary without considering the many ways in which it might have been – and inevitably, eventually will be – different.
Daedelus Kite 