As usual, I enjoyed reading your article but while the ideas are clear I differ on the perception of our actual reality and on important details.

In my country, the dystopia that was described has progressed to catastrophic levels. In the US, the dystopia has already been a fact, to various extent, and for a while and most especially in the military and foreign affairs.

The US is and has been for a long time an imperial power and exploits the world while using its military when needed. Iraq is by no means an isolated case. Covert operations, such as in my country, in Latin America, in African countries and relatively recently in Ukraine (maidan) and many others are facets of this aggression. The dollar tax through reserves and (Swift) transactions are the direct tax that this empire imposes, although this hopefully may finally be coming to an end. Economic aggression, including effective financial sanctions (through the dollar hegemony) have killed way more than any direct war. It is no accident that the US spends on its military nearly as much as the rest of the world combined and has over 750 military bases abroad. As Trump and others indicated, Saudi Arabian dictators wouldn’t last a week without US support. And this is one of innumerable other compromised or dominated regimes to the detriment of the inhabitants.

Another point concerns the economic effectiveness of capitalism. The two most economically successful countries in recent history were the Soviet Union and China. After all, the Soviet Union, at least economically, went from destitution to becoming a world power. This has only been surpassed by China which has had unsurpassed sustained economic growth in the last 40 years with not a single ‘downtick’. It can be argued that the success of ‘western’ countries really stems from colonialism and neo-colonialism which can either be considered a facet of or in spite of capitalism.