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Summary history Summarizing the book's main points gives a rough view of the future during the stage after capitalism. Information products are likely to become the economy's focus. Corporations will come into conflict with their employees who create intellectual property. These employees will either become self-employed or demand intellectual property rights within corporations. Technology and technique improvements will enable remote working and living. As capitalism matures, industrial production capabilities will continue to spread globally. Globalization will eventually tend to equalize economic, military and political power. These quantitative changes will build up and result in the collapse of the capitalist empires. Government and the economy will decentralize. They will become more local and more global. As people take ownership of their work and life from corporations and governments, capitalists will attempt to maintain central control. As capitalism unravels, the tendency will be for these attempts at centralized control to fail. After a period of stalled technical development, technological progress will accelerate. Production automation will increase - largely replacing manual labor. Devolved self-managing small economic units should perform large-scale production. Although society will become increasingly complex, devolved decision-making will mean that regulation and legislation will not increase in proportion to this complexity. A shared ideology will unite societies and laws for government and for the economy will be similar. Central government will have an enabling role rather than a controlling one. Production will use globally networked investment channels. Production will focus on information products as physical production becomes less important to society. Food and consumer goods should be fully available and consumerism should fade away. Production based on physical labor will remain for a long time and with it remnants of the capitalist and working classes. In this meritocratic society, inequalities will remain and some policing will still be required. Moving out of this relatively dormant next stage, the stage after that should be a radically new type of classless society. We aren't sufficiently evolved yet to fully comprehend what this society will be like. Content copyright: Nathan Davis  2003-2010 If you've questions or comments, please contact me:  nathan_k_davis@after-capitalism.com