> Like Communism, capitalism is a teleological system at its root, relying on a narrative of progress, on a forward-moving vector of time, but when that time tu

> Like Communism, capitalism is a teleological system at its root, relying on a narrative of progress, on a forward-moving vector of time, but when that time turns cyclical, repetitive, without a clear direction, the system begins to disintegrate, not under the weight of its own contradictions, as Marx would tell us, but under the weight of its own uniformity. Capitalism is economic freedom and a government to enforce it. It isn't teleological. The apparent telos of capitalism comes from people. It turns out that people, in the presence of freedom, have certain goals which they choose to pursue. Prominent among those goals is the accumulation of wealth. When it becomes excessive, that goal may be worth criticizing but people will choose to pursue it whenever they are free. > Today, we have become citizens of a global, Brezhnevian capitalist state, which, in its failure to provide an inspiring frontier—gone are the days of Kennedy’s “New Frontiers” or Obama’s “Change We Can Believe In”—has slowly ossified and wrapped back upon itself. Do we need politicians to pick our frontiers? Actually there's plenty of frontiers. Some examples are: eradicating human disease, extending human lifespan, replacing fossil field, exploring the solar system, changing how humans interact on the internet, inventing AGI, etc. It's beyond me that someone can claim with a straight face that there's no inspiring frontier. The problem here is people who find these frontiers too boring. They secretly want a do-over of the 20th century. No thanks.