I have heard the term "inflection point" several times in the past week. I cant say that others are using it to refer to the same thing as I am but I too sense an inflection point building.

In the past month, I have done some retail shopping for several items. It has not been a good experience.

All of the items I have purchased, clothes, underwear, shoes, toys, electronics, have the same label on them prominently displayed: made in China.

There are a lot of choices to choose from but they are almost all identical. The only obvious difference is the brand. You can buy underwear from Jockey or Calvin Klein but its basically the same thing and ... made in China.

The quality of the items seems noticeably lower than the same item a year or two earlier. The material is thinner, less sturdy, and usually synthetic instead of natural. Good luck finding a pair of thick cotton gym socks. Now you get super thin, cheapo cotton sock blends or 100% synthetic Nike socks for $15 a pop. All of them are again made in China.

Taken alone, none of these things are totally new or a sudden change. I have been seeing this pattern for years and would argue that they are the natural result of capitalism.

Our capitalistic system is focused on increasing profits through system optimization. Lower labor costs, lower material costs, decrease meaningful product variations, simplify the supply chain. Thousands of people are working on these issues and the results are obvious.

At first it meant quick improvements to the bottom line and allowed more choices. Now I think the trends have matured enough that they are noticeably reducing choices.

These trends are also the steady state trends, things that were happening before the financial melt-down last year.

With the financial crisis we see that people dont have as much money as they thought so there is less demand for the products we used to make. Manufacturing overcapacity and shrinking revenue is leading to bad debts and bankrupt companies. Not only are the fewer choices in Men's underwear but pretty soon there will be fewer brands of mens underwear and fewer retailers to buy them in.

Cars are a case in point. Where we once had three strong American car companies, now we have 1. At least we would if it weren't for extreme government intervention. Now we will have 2 1/2, much smaller companies struggling to survive. Banks and insurance are another area where companies have put themselves out of business if it were for extreme government action.

I see this inflection point leading to two things:

One, the mega corp. For years sci-fi writers have predicted a future of giant corporations that sell everything. As companies continue to go bankrupt and get bought up, it is starting to feel like the future will have a lot fewer companies to choose from.

Two, a lower quality of life. For the past 60 years, capitalism has lead to expanding choices and variety for consumers. Moving forward it seems like there will be less and less meaningful choice as we all have the same thing in different colors.