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I feel obliged to once again reiterate that lay offs and closures are not a reaction to the economy, but a failure of leadership. Each wave of closures and layoffs should be looked upon as a consequence of greed and incompetence. If you can't keep your people employed, you are bad at your job.

A "failure of leadership" is a symptom of the end of capitalism, not the cause.

I wouldn’t quite put it as an “end” of capitalism so much as reaching further into its newer demented form. To find a symptom of its end we look to the systems that will supplant it.

Capitalism is well on its way to ending. As for what will supplant it, that we will have to play by ear. It won't be a system controlled by a handful of people anymore, simply because that won't work in a world as complex as this one has become.

every large scale social system throughout recorded history and protohistory have had the same problems with concentration of wealth and/or power over time. this is a social problem, not a technical or procedural one

It absolutely makes a difference what kind of technology is involved. A social structure that works for an economy based on hand tools and wooden plows does not work for one based on iron and electricity. That is why feudalism was superseded by capitalism, and why capitalism will be superseded soon.

James 2:6, 5:1, 5:4 are two thousand years old and basically discuss the same problems we have today. rich people abusing the poor in courts of law, poor people wishing death upon the rich, rich people committing fraud and stealing wages

"But ye have despised the poor. Do not rich men oppress you, and draw you before the judgment seats?" "Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you." "Behold, the hire of the labourers who have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud [...]"

There have been drastic changes in the degree of difference in power between those you have it and those who don't, however. There's never been any bigger difference than there is right now. That however is not to say that can last forever. Centralized control is inefficient at a large enough scale.