it offered little in the way of enlightenment regarding how we should be dealing with things differently going forward
That is an important discussion that IS happening all over the globe. There is no shortage of ideas.
http://rt.com/programs/interview/capitalism-end-system-replace/“Modern capitalism has reached the end of its rope. It cannot survive as a system,” Wallerstein said. “And what we are seeing is the structural crisis of the system. The structural crisis goes on for a long time. It really started more or less in the 1970s and will go on for another 20, 30, 40 years. It is not a crisis of a year or of a short moment, it is the major structural unfolding of a system. And we are in transition to another system and, in fact, the real political struggle that is going on in the world that most people refuse to recognize is not about capitalism – should we have or should we not have it – but about what should replace it.”
Immanuel Wallerstein also explained there are two different views on what should replace capitalism.
“I would like a more relatively democratic, more relatively egalitarian world – that is one view,” he said. “We never had that in the history of the world, but it is possible. The other view is that you have a very unequal, polarizing, exploitative system. It does not have to be capitalism. Capitalism is that. But you can do that in many other ways, some of which may be far worse than capitalism.”
