This elite, assuming they maintain their political hegemony, can take society as close to the brink of global disaster as they see fit, and they can even take society right over the edge into the breakdown of civilization or perhaps the end of human life on Earth. But such universally dire outcomes would hardly be characteristic of the human ingenuity exhibited every time a previous barrier has been reached. One can expect, I suggest, a more creative solution to moving beyond this final growth barrier, a solution which leads to a favorable outcome for the capitalist elite, who after all must live on the Earth and in society. In a world where everything is run by a few megacorps which are owned by a small global elite, and where that elite has available effective means of maintaining global and civil order, then the landscape begins to resemble much earlier worlds. The globe will have become a single empire, administered by central institutions, and ruled according to the wishes of a small wealthy elite who literally own the world.
Nations become provinces, to be run by designated governors on behalf of the global regime.
Populations become a mass of human resources and consumers, the disempowered bottom end of the global hierarchy. What is being described here is an autocratic global system based on the absolute power of an elite oligarchy. It seems that the era of capitalism and of Enlightenment doctrine, based supposedly on the quest for political and economic liberty, is in fact to bring the world full circle back to elite tyranny. Ultimately the question of capital growth becomes a non-issue in such a world. The elite own the megacorps, the megacorps run the world, and growth can simply be defined as a non-goal.