"The crisis of the U.S. system and of late capitalism as a whole is one of overaccumulation. Economic surplus is generated beyond what can profitably be absorbed in a mature, monopolistic system. This dynamic is associated with high levels of idle capacity, the atrophy of net investment, continuing slow growth (secular stagnation), enhanced military spending, and financial hyperexpansion. The inability of private investment (and capitalist consumption) to absorb all of the surplus actually and potentially available, coupled with government deficit spending, leads to growing amounts of free cash in the hands of corporations. The result is the rise of a system of asset speculation that partially stimulates the economy due to the wealth effect (increases in capitalist consumption fed by a part of the increased returns on wealth), but which is unable to overcome the underlying tendency toward stagnation."

https://monthlyreview.org/2021/01/01/the-contagion-of-capital/

"Suppose we were to grant the questionable claim that the private sector is more “efficient” at allocating resources, primarily by keeping costs down, than the government. So what? How does this show that higher efficiency is something worth achieving more than other desirable aspects of economic activity, such as job security, poverty alleviation, and macroeconomic stability? It does not, at all."

"In any case, the only realistic way to impose these energetic constraints is to have strong public and collective control over the dominant sectors of the economy. It is important to qualify this claim and remove some possible misconceptions. A valerist system would still permit the existence of private exchange markets. You can still go to the local market and eat at your favorite restaurant; the government will not take those things away from you. But to prevent large corporations from accumulating too much wealth and power, and to prevent them from becoming energy guzzlers that threaten the planet’s ecological stability, the state should be involved in their ownership and administration, which in many cases will involve some type of nationalization. In so doing, the valerist state would also put the brakes on the ruthless tendencies of modern capitalism to plunder natural resources and commodify them for large profits in global markets.

In summary, the fundamental features of valerism as an economic system are the following: an average energy consumption rate between 30,000 and 70,000 kilocalories, the organization of economic life around the principle of stability instead of growth, collective and democratic control over the extraction and distribution of natural resources, and a tightly regulated exchange market in which private individuals can try to obtain profits by buying and selling certain goods and services through mutual consent. This program would allow us to move toward a more egalitarian society. Just as importantly, it would also facilitate the survival and stability of industrial civilization."

https://monthlyreview.org/2021/02/01/the-ecological-state/

"Sentiment analysis reveals, for instance, that financial markets, supposedly built around risk modeling, are driven as much by the mood of investors as by empirical reality. This turn to sentiment erodes the interpretive and communicative roles that liberal societies have traditionally granted to scientists, journalists, and professional experts of various kinds. The world of publicly available facts that these figures marshaled and mediated for ordinary citizens becomes increasingly divorced from the hidden world accessed by the miners of private data, with the result that new sets of insiders and outsiders are created and the workings of power become increasingly opaque. The ground is laid for conspiracy theories to replace consensus about reality. According to Davies, we have entered a new regime of truth, one with scant time for the shibboleths and separations — “between public and private, between state and market, politics and media, and between the three branches of government (executive, legislative, judiciary)” — that defined the liberal order."

https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-liberal-trust-crisis