Reply #5: That "enormously-more productive economic engine" is runnin out of gas

[omega minimo]

"How very pretty to think" that "markets, properly controlled, with government playing a regulatory role, CAN correct inefficient resource utilization in the long run."

Better be a pretty damn long run to allow time for "the godless capitalistas will figure out how to engineer more-efficient machines, discover new industries (no one had heard of the integrated circuit in 1970, or the Internet in 1990), and continue exploiting the workers."

This smacks of the same "technology will find a way to fix the mess technology creates" fuzzy logic that is set in motion (and delivered Peak Oil) in Newswolf's last line of the OP.