woke up and decided not to do the capitalism and representative democracy thing, what would follow?
Since you state in your question as a premise that in this hypothetical scenario everyone agreed to stop being a capitalistic republic (i.e. no capitalism and no representative democracy) then the most likely result of that being imposed – namely insurgency against the tyrannical new order, is not likely. Your question includes the following: “What economic and political systems would better meet the needs of today?” which implies that there are such better economic and political systems. That is a supposition that is not supported by historic fact. In my opinion it would take major upheaval to destroy the effectiveness of our current economic and political system. While such might happen, there are not high probability processes that would lead to it. To answer the question then requires coming up with might be plausible causes for the people of the US to make such a choice. Here are some more or less plausible scenarios. 1. The economy collapses completely (think pre-WW-II Germany).
