After Capitalism: What the Signals Are Saying Q4 2025

Here is the fourth of the quarterly check-ins for 2025 on what the signals are saying regarding After Capitalism. (See Q3 2025 here.) Lots of good ones this quarter … it was hard to choose! Drum roll please!

Where Have All the Young Men Gone?

It’s more than lost boys… It’s a lost generation. A post from Jared Brock’s excellent blog Surviving Tomorrow asks “Do you remember the feeling of being a hormonal teenager in love? The passion, the excitement, the tension, the heat? They have none of that.” He observes that they might be beside each other, but they aren’t together. They are miles and miles apart. Yes, these are the teens that are actually out in the real world. They aren’t the millions of teens “locked in their bedrooms like vampires allergic to the sun, doomscrolling social media and porn, watching others play video games, avoiding human interaction like the plague, and then wondering why they’re crushed with mental illness and crippling social anxiety.”

These teenagers are in pace called “in between,” characterized by the rapid, endless movement of thumbs and thumbnails.

AH Comment: This certainly fits with my observations … and not just teens. I see the same thing at my gym … sitting on machines scrolling as if in a different world losing track of time. Practically zero human interaction. Marching toward the “tub of goo.”

Building the Ownership Economy

The Unlock Ownership Fund is based on shared ownership and robust governance in order to “take back our economy from the broken extractive policies we currently use that are hurting most people.” It is seeking to accelerate a just transition from our extractive economy to one centered on equitable ownership. They believe that equitable models of employee and community ownership, combined with democratic governance, are revolutionary tools for building tangible wealth, fostering economic democracy, and creating resilient, locally rooted economies that serve their communities rather than private interests.

AH Comment: I really love this approach. They include a link to their theory of change … nice! Very thoughtfully laid out argument. Practical, applicable, and transformative. It speaks to how we build out the transition. Bravo, or as I like to say oooo …. dang!

Elon Musk’s $1 trillion pay package

After years of litigation, a judge in Delaware, where Tesla was incorporated like most big U.S. companies, ruled against Tesla and Musk’s record-breaking pay package of 2018. As corporations began feared and hinted that Delaware might no longer be the best place to incorporate… last March Deleware passed a law to make the state more alluring. Texas quickly counter-punched with an even friendlier law. Key feature: Lawsuits against companies like the suit in Delaware can be initiated only by shareholders who hold at least 3% of the company’s shares. The only person with more than 3% of Tesla is Musk. This summer, Tesla left Delaware and incorporated in Texas, where the company’s board promptly offered Musk the new, eye-popping pay package.

AH Comment: And the race to the bottom among accelerates. If anyone is still doubting whether it’s “game over” for capitalism, this should do the trick. One trillion dollars for one person. This sounds like a Dr. Evil plot from the Austin Powers spoof movies. BUT IT’S REAL.! 

— Andy Hines