Japan is a free market, and their economy hasn't grown for years. I haven't heard anyone say it has collapsed, though. No Japanese are starving, and they haven't declared war.
If you want to see a free-market economy collapse, watch out for what happens when the Asian bloc, as it eventually must, decides not to buy any more dollars.
"Circumstances seem to me as dangerous and intractable as any I can remember, and I can remember a lot." And: "As a nation we are consuming and investing about 6 percent more than we are producing." That was Paul Volcker, former chairman of the Federal Reserve.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A38725-2005Apr8.html
We'll do nothing now, but we'll remember these words in about five years time. 1929 will seem like a mild hiccup.
John
Agree completely, in that we see that behaviour here and undoubtely in other "westernised" countries. But there must come a point where rising cost of manufacture/promotion of all this junk meets the disposable income ceiling and sales fall. Once that happens, the free market model collapses as it depends, in its entirety, on growth.
mike
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