"there is a limit to how much a society can pay for the financial losses incurred by capitalism."

Actually anon, as long as the working class remains unorganised and absent from the political stage capitalism will have no trouble at all forcing ordinary working people to pay for its own crises.

Not sure how this qualifies me as an "optimist" - rather my point is that a lot of the catastrophism being proponded by leftists at the moment is sheer wishful thinking on their part, in that capitalism will have no difficulty ensuring its own survival absent a revolutionary political movement of the working class.

If the working class were in a position to seriously challenge the system then the ruling class might have to consider ditching bourgeois democracy for other less subtle forms of control such as military dictatorship, but as things stand currently they will hardly even have to break a sweat!