Capital in the 21st Century

In the latter, as long as you profit, everything is fine. In fact, if you have sufficient capability to financialize, you don’t even need profit now. You can promise endless future profits, “grow” (i.e., “increase”), sell the rights to them, and move on. Everything becomes reducible to its immediate flows. But as you gradually strip away your own and everybody else’s capital – as you dismantle, trade, and consume every tool – you will find returns to be more and more elusive and, eventually, impossible. The only important question becomes, who is holding the bag?