I hate to say, PMBug, that it's even worse than that at this point. You can't have everyone working 70 hour weeks if there's no demand for the stuff produced! It's another direction for the eventual collapse to come from in my opinion.
I'm not talking of the obvious spiral here where no jobs means no demand which means no jobs. I'm talking about just not needing the stuff at all.
I've been watching this for a long time, and trying to come up with an answer.
Here's a gross problem-statement.
As tech improves - more and more things are automated. There's more productivity per man hour, thus, to make the same amount, or even an increasing amount of "Stuff" there needs to be less labor input. Our system in general (though some would say we're moving away from this) doesn't know how to pay you if you don't work. Capitalism will always drive toward maximum efficiency - this is normally considered a good thing. But in the limit - you could imagine just one huge robotic factory that makes *everything* humans want, and due to the "monopoly board game" nature of all this, it's probably owned by just about one entity.
Only now, that guy is screwed - because he already has all the money, no one can pay him for the output of that factory in any value he's interested in - he already has all the money and all the means of producing stuff.
I believe this is already happening. After I have all the cars I can drive, and all the computers I can decently use, all the land as far as the eye can see - I drop out of the markets for any of those things, and in my case, I even take care of all my heat and some of my food....
We see things bouncing off all these limits already. The commodity computer makers are all going away, as there's no value at the margin of making yet more of the same old thing - Apple is an exception at the moment - as they keep creating new "must-have" things, requiring their fanbois to trash the old, and acquire the new to keep that "I'm cool because of what I bought" BS going on. Except they are foundering themselves now...and having to sue the entire rest of the business over some pretty silly stuff before they lose all market share to other things that will eventuate in the utter commoditization of cheap phones, pads and so on - whereupon that whole high markup business is toast, just like a lot of others in the past. Innovate their way out of it? Well, I'm waiting, but it doesn't look good at this point.
So, the capitalist system itself is finally hitting a wall, on top of what Martensen is talking about - this isn't the same problem at all. We could go to the star trek universe, where no one has to work, and value is automatically and somehow "fairly" distributed - except human nature doesn't allow for that, it was a major flaw in the concept. Without a profit motive, no one will invest or work. With it - we hit this wall at some point.
I wish I had an answer to it, I'm no booster of socialism, because that doesn't work any better - human nature issues arise in all extant systems....so far - and it feels pretty unfair, not to mention being anti-Darwinian, which is never a good thing.
And of course, the above, as PMBug points out, is why Ben is stuck in a trap of his own making - you can't go below zero IR, and you can't allow them to rise as that kills any ability to even pay the interest - and hyperinflation here we come - the thing is, it can keep getting kicked down the road longer than most of us can wait to place the bets most effectively. Betting on that outcome right now means tying up money that could be more productive now, and holding things at a loss is just not the best for anyone concerned.
Stupid-human tricks!