The USA has been exporting its legal system for decades. And the UK still makes plenty of stuff. I really don't think this is valid. There is a close analogy though, companies that end up losing in the marketplace tend to become legally active to try to extract a tax from those that did better.

I fully agree that the US does the same thing, as do other countries- that's why I framed it as a general observation. I agree about the similar corporate behavior. I don't think it's a healthy development, but it's not easy to develop a general model of how this kind of thing plays out.

One of the big things I've been wondering about the decision of the Anglosphere to all switch to a service economy: why would you do that when your population is both smaller and dumber than the populations of other countries?

The UK (nor the US) has no advantage in providing services, all it can do is demand that other people be prevented from providing them.

One advantage English speaking countries have WRT the service economy is that most of the world speaks English at this point.

English became the language of international trade, of course, because we’re all just so adorably stupid, and our countries are tiny and harmless. Plus it is such an easy language to pick up…

> why would you do that when your population is both smaller and dumber than the populations of other countries?

Given that, shouldn't you be able to answer the question?

You're the smartest, most clever, most physically fit, but why does nobody else seem to realize it?

It's the UK that is going North Korea on everyone. Closing off the internet, restricting speech and so on.

Edit: that's not to say it isn't a valid strategy; NK has a big stability buff.

It wasn't a decision to switch to services - I'm in the UK - it's just left to the market and that's where the money is mostly. It's kind of irrelevant if your population is large or small etc.

Because capitalism can't accept the inevitable fact that infinite exponential growth is literally impossible. It's not a "service economy" it's a "rent extraction" economy.

Capitalists need more growth and more returns now and since innovating, producing goods, and providing customer service costs money, we simply charge people a monthly fee to use their heated car seats.

This is what the brutal, messy end of capitalism looks like. Relentless self-cannibalization, burning billions of dollars tomorrow to make one cent today.

If nothing makes sense, that's because it doesn't. There is no logic or reason or planning involved. It's more money now, period. Consequences don't matter because we get more money right this second.

Capitalists are apparently unaware of what happens when they've extracted all possible money from the economy.

Your concerns are true, but I'm not sure if this answers the question above. After all, the shift to service economies started a very long time before the crisis ramped up to what it's like today. And even today, under a crust of rent-seeking businesses, circular investing and outright scams, there's plenty of quiet, boring businesses that provide actually important and relevant services. It can (and probably will) still get so, so, so much worse than this. So clearly, there's more factors in play here that made most of the first world transition to providing services, since we weren't remotely close to running out of ways to extract and sell goods then (and still aren't, not yet).