then much the same can be said for fascist autocracies and all the capitalist variations thereof. In the past, market economies were able to engage in long-term investment projects with perceived benefits that might not manifest themselves for centuries...the Dutch Republic's coastal land reclamation projects at the end of the middle ages come to mind. So do the Suez and Panama canals,

But modern corporate capitalism seems incapable of seeing past the near future profit picture and has shown little interest in investing in anything that will not produce benefits in the investors' lifetimes. Individual entrepreneurs like Bezos and Musk may still maintain that long-term vision, but the publicly held companies run by professional money managers simply refuse to act in the interest of the societies they serve. They're in it for the short term.

The collectivist, publicly held corporation seemed like a great idea at the time, a means of democratizing capitalism so everyone could participate profitably and future generations benefit. But it doesn't seem to be working out now.

You can justly criticize the greed and rapaciousness of the robber barons who laced North America with railroads in the 19th century, but at least those men had a vision for the future, a vision they knew full well would not be realized in their lifetimes. I just don't see anything like that happening today.

We speak here often of the entrepreneurs and visionaries struggling to build start-ups that will drive space exploration in the 21st century. I salute these men, but I also see within them the seeds of their own destruction. As soon as they begin to achieve those lofty ambitions, when they start to serve a real societal need and generate real profits, they will be gobbled up by the great money-making mills of Wall Street, who will mercilessly squeeze all the profit out of them and then move on to something else.