I used to believe capitalism could work if it was just done right.

This is an unpopular opinion around here but greed and the desire for power are the real problems and they exist in any economic system.

Capitalism wouldn’t be that bad if wealth was distributed equitably - heavy wealth taxes et cetera supporting socialised human policies like education, healthcare, UBI, et cetera.

So… socialism, but worse.

To port over a semantic argument from elsewhere on Lemmy:

You know the phrase “own the means of production?” A phrase I’ve been taught to associate with communism is “the workers shall own the means of production.”

Well, ‘the workers’ means ‘the people’, and ‘the people’ means ‘the public’, and anything owned by ‘the public’ is actually owned by ‘the government’ and ‘the government’ is controlled by ‘the elites.’ Which is why any communist nation falls immediately to despotism, the instant you actually form your communist government the elites are in 100% control.

I’ve argued with someone on here before on the difference between a free market economy and capitalism. I was taught in a free market economy, private individuals own the means of production. An individual has his tools, he works, and trades goods or services to others at prices set by the laws of supply and demand. Under capitalism, capitalists own the means of production, a capitalist is a wealthy individual who invests that wealth - or capital - in ventures with an aim to make a profit. The boss owns the tools and pays workers a wage. The American system has sloshed around between those two extremes since the industrial revolution, periods like the early 20th century trusts and robber barons and…now, where large corporations headed by a very few very wealthy individuals own basically everything, and periods like the 50’s and 90’s when smaller startups in exciting new fields were springing up. The former are the closest we come to the elites owning the means of production, and it tends to be a terrible time to be alive for the average citizen, the latter are the closest I think humanity has come to “the people” meaning individuals at large actually owning the means of production.

Neither system “lifted millions out of poverty.” Neither capitalism or communism has the means or motive to do that. Industrialization did that. Turns out, improving the reliability and quality of food, water, tools and medicine increases the population’s standard of living.

So don’t have a government either.