The Road To Chaos Life under late twentieth century capitalism has started to exhibit the characteristics of chaos. The future is becoming increasingly unpredictable. Events are starting to take everybody by surprise.

When free market capitalism was young, perhaps its progress was smooth. But it did not remain so. Under the irresistible pressure of psychological marketing projected through ever more powerful mass media, demand from the ever-expanding market soared. Under the relentless push of automation and control technology, worker productivity also soared. Thus soared the k factor we saw in the Standard Logistic Difference Equation. The slope of the initial rise of every product's population growth curve thus became steeper and steeper.

However, the capitalist is never satisfied. He pushes technology further and further and sheds more and more labour. This pushes the logistical k factor upwards and upwards. Unfortunately, as the k factor is pushed higher and higher, the product population growth curve does not merely get steeper and steeper: it changes its whole shape and character. At first, as the productivity and marketing gain from technology climbs, the curve starts to ring. It undergoes an initial oscillation which quickly dies out as the product population settles down at its saturation level.

But technology pushes further. To the lathe is added the automatic tool capstan and stock feed. To the mail is added the telegraph. To the horse and cart is added the railway. Sail is replaced by steam. To newspapers is added radio. The k factor is thus driven higher. The curve undergoes another metamorphosis. Now, instead of settling down to a steady limit it oscillates back and forth forever between two levels.

This makes even the markets for consumable staple items (which would normally not be subject to change) go through periodic boom and bust.

Even after this unstable state has been reached, technology still presses onwards. The hopper-fed capstan lathe is superseded by the numerical control machine and then the industrial robot. The railway is displaced by the heavy truck. The steamship is outpaced by the aircraft. To radio is added television. Mail is displaced by the telephone. The type-writer is replaced by the computer. Telegraphy is superseded by the Internet.

And these technological advances drive the k factor relentlessly higher until eventually the product population curve undergoes its ultimate and most catastrophic metamorphosis.

Instead of settling down to a steady oscillation after its initial climb, it now meanders up and down chaotically and unpredictably. Since the product population is chaotic, the curve representing the market's rate of demand for it is even more contorted. This means that consumption cannot be predicted. Production cannot be planned. All this is just for one product. With a constant stream of new products, including ones launched by competitors, the demand curve becomes unmanageable.

A bottomless market suddenly materialises out of nowhere creating an unlimited need for many specialist skills. The future is safe. Then just as suddenly it vanishes like the morning mist. Wasted stock. Hundreds of highly qualified specialists on the dole. A permanent workforce is no longer viable. Short-term agency-based labour is barely workable. Job security is part of history. Prices go crazy. Currencies become unstable.

Firms vainly try to hold prices high by dismantling surplus production capacity and destroying excess stock to make it scarcer. They force others to follow by influencing government to raise interest rates. But the result is mass unemployment. So instead of the labourer feeding the capitalist with profit, he must now feed the labourer through the social security system. Otherwise he must face the violent consequences of social revolution. Far from stabilising the market, these frantic attempts by the capitalist, and the government he supports, merely pave the way for even more extensive and more destructive crises. Furthermore, they actually reduce the ability of the economy to withstand such crises.

This is because this chaotic instability within the market has nothing to do with human management of the economy. It is not even to do with the nature of the economy itself. It is in fact a fundamental property of the Standard Logistic Difference Equation. It is caused by something as basic as the nature of numbers themselves. So as long as the capitalist deploys ever more productive technology in his unrestrained quest for greater and greater profit, the k factor continually rises. Demand from the market becomes increasingly more chaotic. The cycle of boom and bust itself becomes ever more frequent and extreme. Fortunes are won and lost in an instant. Life becomes ever more stressful and uncertain.