Technology

Capitalism means different things to different people. In my opinion it's an almost meaningless term now.

Building new factories is definitely one strategy. The upside is the building's infrastructure and footprint can exactly match the system you're implementing. The downside is that it's much more expensive and time consuming. The bottom line is if you can't fulfill your orders or your projections predict you won't be able to in the short term then it might convince you to retrofit an existing building rather than build a new one.

I'm a firm believer that there will always be someone who's willing to pay someone else to do something. New technologies obliterate old jobs but tend to create new jobs in the process. It's the in-between time that's truly difficult. When you have a job force trained for a job that isn't needed anymore. Retraining is the often cited cure but I don't know how scalable that really is.

A social safety net is important but there are a lot of states that either can't or won't provide that safety net in any substantial way. Just look at the republican state that sued trying to prevent the federally subsidized Medicaid expansion. The voters in these states don't seem to care enough about it to vote politicians in who want to provide a safely net.