This question continues to plague me as I watch Lefties and Environmentalists make every effort to kill modern commerce.
I won’t live to see the devastation that these blind ideologs are doing to the world but my life work will have been a failure if they succeed.
We know that modern commerce can be suppressed in an emerging environment. That was true for Russia, North Korea, Cuba and Venezuela. Russia has not survived the socialist suppression to become a modern commercial society, but China, India and Israel have.
Can a full flowering modern commercial society be stultified? I believe it can. The best example for me is Germany. Before National Socialism in 1933, Germany was one of the most active participants in the modern commercial world. It had I.G. Farben, Bayer, Agfa, Krupp and Daimler-Benz. Important global companies.
While Germany today remains a powerhouse in modern commerce, Germany lacks commercial vitality. Seriously stultified by union control of boards of directors a socialist economy, an hereditary class hierarchy and a deeply ingrained Lefty-Environmental-Socialism.
Germany is an example of a country that became socialist and has gone from a vital modern commercial society pre-1933 to a lame duck after WW 11 with good workers but only a driving power in the stagnant pond of the EU.
It is worthwhile fearing for the United States with the prospect of a socialist Democrat Party in our future. It can't stop modern commerce but it can stifle it.