There is no clear definition of this phase because capitalism has never made it this far before. But I would offer some characteristics that I think historians will note when they write about the end of the capitalism era that roughly began with Adam Smith. Coincidentally, his "Wealth of Nations" treatise was published in 1776. Does that year ring a bell? IN other words, the history of capitalism tracks directly with the history of America politics.
Anyway, here are some things I think historians will consider pivotal changes that brought us to the end of capitalism:
1) While fiat currency is an essential part of capitalism, there comes a point where the money supply, in parallel with the debts governments take on, become nonsensical -- so large as to have no real connection with any real-world productive activities.
2) Obscene levels of wealth concentration. 700 US billionaires have more wealth than the bottom 50% (the bottom 170 million) COMBINED.
3) Monopolies or strong oligopolies in most major industries, leading to rampant price-gouging.
4) The richest 0.1% plowing vast amounts of money into the electoral system, allowing them to essentially control all important government decisions.
5) The richest people and corporations gaining control over the majority of the major media outlets and actively using that to propagandize in favor of their personal interests.
6) Success in business no longer a function of innovation, hard work or technology breakthrough, but now primarily a result of crony connections with people running the government.
7) Fixation on imaginary or intangible things (cryptocurrency, NFTs, insanely valued stocks), leading to a runaway "wealth effect".
On the at last point, the real economy has been good after recovering from COVID, and that alone produces good consumer confidence. But what we have here are stock markets that are insanely inflated, not coincidentally, but the richest of the billionaires, most notably Musk, Bezos, Ellison, Zuckerberg et al. We see Tesla stock valued 20x higher than any car company even though the companies margins are mediocre and they no longer have much growth. We see similar patterns with NVDA, NFLX and other companies that are so fabulously valued that they now distort the stock indexes.
This adds to the "wealth effect" where people with investments feel like they are prosperous. But what goes up can come tumbling down. With such financial insanity (buy an imitation Trump faux-Gibson guitar worth $50 tops for $10,000), it will not take much for the bubble to burst. And when that happens, the collapse of this astronomical wealth effect could easily send us into recession. And these increasing levels of credit card debt are a very ominous sign.
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