Debt: The First 5000 Years - autonomous learning

360 DEBT
One could go further: the moment that the fear of imminent social
revolution no longer seemed plausible, by the end of World War II, we
were immediately presented with the specter of nuclear holocaust.116
Then, when that no longer seemed plausible, we discovered global
warming. This is not to say that these threats were not, and are not,
real. Yet it does seem strange that capitalism feels the constant need
to imagine, or to actually manufacture, the means of its own imminent
extinction. It's in dramatic contrast to the behavior of the leaders
of socialist regimes, from Cuba to Albania, who, when they came to
power, immediately began acting as if their system would be around
forever-ironically enough, considering they in fact turned out to be
something of an historical blip.
Perhaps the reason is because what was true in 1710 is still true.
Presented with the prospect of its own eternity, capitalism-or anyway,
financial capitalism-simply explodes. Because if there's no end
to it, there's absolutely no reason not to generate credit-that is, future
money-infinitely. Recent events would certainly seem to confirm this.
The period leading up to 2oo8 was one in which many began to believe
that capitalism really was going to be around forever; at the very least,
no one seemed any longer to be able to imagine an alternative. The immediate
effect was a series of increasingly reckless bubbles that brought
the whole apparatus crashing down.