Late-Stage Capitalism, Harder

Carney’s Liberals Aren’t Offering a Future, They’re Managing a Decline

Nora Loreto didn’t drop a take. She dropped the entire operating diagnosis in one line: “They’re just doing late-stage capitalism, harder.”

Let’s not waste time. This isn’t ideology. It’s institutional reflex. Mark Carney is not arriving with vision. He’s arriving with instruments. The Liberals aren’t positioning to transform Canada, they’re positioning to tranquilize it. The finance class has activated one of its own, not because they need leadership, but because they need insulation.

A nation that once prided itself on moderation is now gripped by something far more dangerous: managed stagnation. A performative centrism that has no intention of resolving its contradictions, only managing them.

When systems are fragile, they call in Carney. Not to fix the foundation, but to keep the roof from caving in during the investor meeting. Ask Harper.

The Illusion of Stability
Look closely. Carney and the Liberals are not presenting a bold new policy vision because they don’t believe they need to. They believe the public will trade novelty for normalcy. Aspiration for assurance. But this is the fatal misread.

People don’t want safe. They want real.

Stability, in a vacuum, is not a strategy. It’s sedation. And right now, the electorate is being offered a kind of institutional fentanyl... a slow-drip of GDP stats, climate credentials, and equity talking points, all carefully curated to signal progress while avoiding consequence.

Nothing in Carney’s orbit challenges the structure. Everything affirms it.

Late-Stage Capitalism Isn’t a Meme. It’s a Manual.
This is where Loreto’s phrase matters. “Late-stage capitalism” isn’t Twitter snark. It’s a live document. A governing operating system defined by a few core imperatives:

• Preserve capital flows above all else.
• Privatize upside, socialize downside.
• Extract narratives, not change.
• Outsource consequence.
• Monetize discontent.

Carney’s political presence is not the antidote to this system, it’s the professionalization of it. His appeal is surgical: a calm, credentialed adult to steady the wheel while the engine dies. A man who will do capitalism right this time, as if moral arithmetic can be balanced by tone.

But You Can’t Regulate Collapse.
You can manage inflation. You can modulate interest rates. But you can’t central-bank your way out of a civilizational malaise. You can’t spreadsheet despair.

The rot is not fiscal. It’s systemic. And Carney’s toolkit — for all its polish — was not built for systemic renewal. It was built for institutional survival.

What we’re seeing is not a failure to lead. It’s a refusal to imagine.

The Real Risk: The Absence of Belief
The danger isn’t that Carney and the Liberals are incompetent. The danger is they’re competent, in the wrong direction. Their skills are real. Their intentions might even be sincere. But they are wired for management, not movement.

And this is the fracture in Canadian politics. The public no longer believes the system is capable of producing real change, and they’re right. Because no one running it believes that either.

Ask yourself: What would Carney risk? What structure would he break? What stake would he place that could alienate Bay Street or bureaucrats? None. Because he wasn’t appointed to disrupt. He was summoned to protect.

There Is No Centre — Only Delay.
Liberal centrism today is not a political philosophy. It’s a delay tactic. A placeholder ideology that exists to suppress political volatility while pretending to accommodate both sides. But volatility is not the enemy. It’s the signal. It tells us the system can’t stretch any further.

Every “stable” policy position they take is a slow-moving compromise designed to avoid the real reckoning. Whether it’s housing, wealth concentration, climate transition, or economic inequality, the Liberal playbook is to defer, dilute, or distract.

They call it realism. But it’s cowardice in a suit.

*at least I didn't write a song this time...

What Carney Represents: Soft Power in a Dying System
Carney is the embodiment of institutional soft power — affable, articulate, “reasonable.” He will never offend your sensibilities. But that’s the problem. The structures causing this decline require offence. Require disruption. Require someone willing to name the cost of inaction.

Instead, Carney will offer just enough action to neutralise opposition. He will decorate the operating room while the patient bleeds out.

So What Do We Do?
This is the moment to exit the opposition frame. Stop waiting for political redemption. Start building parallel infrastructure. Carney’s arrival is the clearest signal yet, the establishment has no intention of reforming itself.

So we don’t protest it. We replace it.
We build the next operating system:

• Business models that redistribute power, not just capital.
• Economic systems that reward value creation, not extraction.
• Civic platforms that scale voice, not visibility.
• Political formations that are grounded in work, not narrative.

Platform co-operatives. Civic venture funds. Public-led R&D ecosystems. Education that weaponises clarity, not conformity. This is not utopia. It’s infrastructure.

We have the tools. We just need the will.

Don’t Wait for Collapse to Be Obvious.
Collapse doesn’t always come as spectacle. Sometimes it comes as silence. A gradual erosion of meaning, until people stop caring, stop voting, stop dreaming.

That’s what Carneyism threatens: not tyranny, but technocracy. Government without guts. Leadership without risk. A Canada that functions, but no longer believes.

This Is the Time to Build
If Carney becomes Prime Minister again this election, the lesson is not that the system works. The lesson is that it defends itself. And if you’re still trying to change it from within, stop.

This is your permission slip. Exit the theatre. Pick up tools. Raise capital. Recruit builders. Fund infrastructure. Write doctrine. Seize real leverage.

They’re doing late-stage capitalism harder. So what? Do the next system harder.

Let’s move. Prove it. What are you building?

This is what I’m working on. Tell me what you think, I enjoy the conversation! Subscribe and follow the work in real time.

Thanks!

B

Proconsul 🇨🇦 (@proconsul.bsky.social)

Visionary Strategic Growth A guide for ambition, bridging strategy with implementation for modern business: clarity, structure, and sustainable impact. I listen. If it’s possible, I’ll show you how. proconsul.ghost.io

Bluesky Social

They didn’t install Carney to inspire you. They installed him to pacify you.
He’s not here to build the future, he’s here to manage the decline.
Late-stage capitalism doesn’t fail loud. It fails smooth.

PS -