Capitalism has been dead for a long time. We have an oligopoly, where most industries are controlled by few players. They do not have to meet and plot anymore. The internet provides them with all they require to control markets.
The control is why they were able to end price wars, improvement of products like they used to have to do, and give abysmal customer service. Who are you going to call if your internet service provider jacks prices up and makes you talk to someone in India for problems? If you have a few providers in your area, it makes almost no difference to change. They do the same because they can max profits while doing as little work as possible.
This is an issue that comes up in the early stages of technological change. There are four broad periods of history with respect to technology. These are:
Ancient. In the Ancient period a lot of basic technology was discovered. Much of it was lost over time, rediscovered, and progress forward was slow and often limited to local areas where something was discovered.
Rennaissance. This is the age of transformation. What happened in the Rennaissance was a combination of ability to retain and disseminate knowledge occurred along with standardized methods for scientific and engineering advancement. That is, the printing press was invented and the scientific method was more or less codified. This allowed previous human knowledge to be retained and spread.
Industrial (or mechanical): The Industrial revolution sprung from the knowledge that came out of the Rennaissance. It caused an upheaval in society. Prior to it, roughly 90% of people lived in small towns and farmed or did something related to agriculture as an occupation. With the Industrial revolution, this reversed and today something like 80 to 90% of people live in urban areas and larger towns. Initially, that was to service factories and businesses related to factory output. Later, control systems to operate large industrial complexes arose.
At the height of the Industrial revolution, the skyscraper appeared. This was for all intents a manual computer system that allowed operation of a large corporation and the information that required.
Electronic: This is the current revolution in technology. Yes, some people call it an "Information revolution" but this is clearly wrong. The information has always been there, what's changed is that now there are ways to store, organize, and disseminate it that never existed before. It has allowed a connectivity that never before existed, and that is creating a new shift in society. No longer do workers in fields that deal with information have to be concentrated to do their work. Electronics allows them to work from anywhere. Electronics have also replaced workers in repetitive and menial jobs and that trend is accelerating.
At some point, much like Ma Bell / AT&T, internet providers will face the same decentralization of services with prices falling to near nil.
Capitalism still works fine too. The difference is that the new intellectual property is to discover some new way to use electronics rather than mechanical machines as the Industrial revolution did. That's all. Entepreueurs will still come along and develop both hardware and software that will continue to revolutionize things. They are the Capitalists of the Electronics revolution.
