As long as we create structures that concentrate power in the hands of the few, policies change and resources flow into those circles.
Isn't that the opposite of "concentrated"?
The bad faith is recognized in communism. It is why it is suggested that nations must first move to socialism in order to pave the way to post-scarcity. It was believed that private interests will create artificial scarcity even after we are able to technically achieve post-scarcity if the public doesn't first gain control over the means of production.
He comes from money, and would have had no problem living anywhere he liked.
Just read his wikipedia page:
> In 1995, Musk, his brother Kimbal, and Greg Kouri founded web software company Zip2 with funds borrowed from Musk's father.
If the YMCA story is supposed to signify "rags", then it's a carefully constructed image and nothing else.
The regulatory mechanism is what and from whom the participants are willing to purchase.
Fully disagree here. I could list a hundred egregious examples where this isn't true for major aspects of life, but it's late and I'm tired of arguing on the internet. Perhaps tomorrow I'll respond with examples.
Just replace democracy with capitalism and government with market.
They optimize for what they want, not what they need, which is a big difference. They would probably align with public good if it was the latter. Also, they optimize for what people who have money want.
Participants want comfort (which we can't blame them for) and are not incentivized to solve poverty.
Not saying that capitalism did not bring good stuff (won't state it neither), but part of the current result is global warming, pollution and the existence of people living in bad conditions.
Global warming is rather mostly a consequence of overpopulation. In the past, people often died of starvation or illnesses. "Unluckily" capitalism managed to reduce these problems by a lot.
> and the existence of people living in bad conditions.
In most communist countries, the living conditions were worse, so this is rather again a success story of capitalism.
Capitalism does not assume the market optimize for the public good. It assumes when each party optimizes for their own self-interest, that optimizes resource use.
And in terms of regulatory capture/corruption, I hope you're not assuming that it's somehow unique to capitalism? In fact, as the Soviet Union and China have shown, corruption is rather greater under those systems.
As we probably know from the history of 19th/20th centuries, taken to their extreme these ideologies can be highly dangerous.
Communism mainly optimises for the good of the high ranking party members and other apparatchiks in charge they might occasionally throw some scraps to ordinary people but I don't see how can it be considered inherently superior to capitalism in this regard based on real world example.
While following 'capitalist policies' have generally resulted in a significant overall increase in the 'common good' it is unquestionably that it has also caused many terrible tragedies. However pretty much the only positive thing about communism that I can think of is that the fear of it spreading encouraged many western governments to enact progressive social, political and economical reforms (it's debatable whether this was actually a significant factor, though).
This happens when ideology meets the reality of dealing with people, who are mostly egoistic. Pure capitalism ideology leads into another trap: the one of oligarchic rule, with smaller groups of egoists winning the game of monopoly.
A less radical version of communism, the one implemented in late USSR, where the state owns and plans everything for everyone, while proving some common good benefits (medicine, education, etc) also has a couple of fundamental problems.
One is the economical problem of having to plan everything for everyone. A book called "Red Plenty" covers this really well, as well as some bits of a math behind it (linear programming, etc). In market-based economies these problems sort of go away. Until one has to deal with monopolies, that is.
I don't know if somebody has an explanation for the other problem, political in nature. Communists and modern "communist-socialist" states seem to always insist on political monopoly, which makes it impossible for people to provide fast feedback to policy-makers.
So it seems that an optimal balance achieved by "enlightened democratic capitalism", where the exploitive (and economically more efficient) nature of capitalism is balanced by democratic feedback.
It seems, though, that capitalism does allow for faster wealth generation. Given proper corrections and balances, of course.
I can name quite a lot of countries that never went the socialism way, but are not rich in any sense of the word.
Again, in theory.