The Future of U.S. Capitalism

In this work, Frederic Pryor tries to predict the future of U.S. capitalism through the year 2050. His laboriously constructed arguments, spread out over perhaps too many pages, offer the reader a decidedly downbeat future. Using a model that relies on three main dimensions-degree of governmental influence, degree of economic competition, and degree of social solidarity-he concludes that declines in economic competition and social solidarity may lead to a future where an oligarchic market economy may well prevail. While there is much to agree with in this effort, Pryor's discussion is disproportionably devoid of the topics that are generally associated with the success of capitalism-namely, the issues of private property ownership, the efficiency of the price system, the role of the entrepreneur, and the benefits of competition. He argues that if capitalism is to survive, then individual self-interest, as we know it, will have to be replaced by a more communal type of decision making-one where people make decisions on the basis of mutual best interest.