But most of the elite are now not generating anything of worth. There's the odd Elon Musk type, but mostly they're parasites - property barons, financial speculators, Silicon Valley oligarchs - the kind of people who cost western economies billions with the last financial crisis and left the tax payer to foot the bill. So I don't get this 'brain drain' argument. None of this wealth they're generating is coming back to me in any form. They can fuck off.
Liberal capitalism is over, dead. Or at least financial, debt-based capitalism. It's continuing in a zombie state. It may have been great in it's nineteenth and twentieth century hey day day, but it has been pushed to an impossible limit. The state capitalism of the Keynesian era worked because western economies manufactured lots of tangible stuff, and all the stuff was made by factories full of unionised labourers who could bargain for a fair cut of the pie, and then all the stuff was bought by people who paid tax, and so on. Now all the factories have gone, and we're left with a system of purely extractive capitalism represented by big data, property investment, and financial speculation. All of these operations create little to no real economy wealth, chiefly enfranchising an asset rich elite. Everything - even our personal data - is being securitised into asset return for oligarchic leeches, while less and less exchangeable commodities are being produced and bought. People won't have enough money to buy all the products; intellectual property will become redundant as the internet goes out of control; The result is a tinder box of low wage, casualised, poorly paid work; sky rocketing rents; global deflation; asset bubbles; and declining productivity - all of which have created a lot of that rage and fear that has empowered this new demagogic politics represented by Trump.
This is an important question for feminism, because the collapse of capitalism could result in some very female-unfriendly possible worlds. In fact, this is happening already. There is either:
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An authoritarian, patriarchal, ethno-nationalism (Trump, Putin, Modi, Duterte, Islamo-fascism) - and you ain't going to want that.
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Tech feudalism. A tiny elite controlling financial systems and global internet hubs - interfacing with organised crime syndicates - and a shit load of pauperized people all scrabbling around in a gig economy. Inevitably, this will include increasing numbers of women supplementing whatever measly income they get with prostitution, webcam and porn work etc.
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(most likely) A combination of both.
I think it's time to start thinking about a new kind of society, and one in which men and women can co-exist more equitably and harmoniously. Because I can tell you this: a feminist revolution simply will not happen in these economic conditions. Market capitalism is a system of violence, and it will either insist you (women) become violent too (the hardened career women) or it will turn you into meat.
I don't know what the alternative is. It may be socialism; it may be a new form of more enlightened, socialised capitalism. But to say the issue of economic culture doesn't matter is crass and naive.