Capitalism only works in theory. While it might sound good in principle, the realities of human nature make it impractical as a way to organize an economic system.
Or, at least, of those that we can remember we’ve tried—- where our memory consists strictly of… the set of written artifacts that have survived all the way until today. Subject to interpretation, and with a built-in bias for the more recent.
What percent of all human organizational structures in history exists in that memory? How many exist in dig sites buried beneath the oceans, where the coastlines once stood? How many were written down on something temporary, such as, say, paper, and were destroyed before we could read them?
I think this is why people feel strongly that there could be a better approach. We haven’t explored much of the space at all. Though any unexplored option would be very risky to try at scale, of course, and perhaps there lies the rub.
US railroads have entered the chat
I don't get what you're saying. I didn't even know railroads were people, but you learn something new every day, I guess.
The times we live in.
We might disagree on the relative importance of the concessions required, but I hope we can all agree that there is simply no perfect system (yet).
The “poverty” narrative a lie, a rehashing of the old “savages” narrative. It goes hand in hand with this idea that "poor" countries need the western world’s help. No they don’t. Has forced indebtedness helped them? No. And most of their people did not even get a say in the matter of becoming indebted. Advertising of nonprofits and the like is still littered with posters of white men kissing little black babies. It’s quite strange.
In fact, America as a culture is quite new and though it has many good qualities, seeds which can be watered to make for a better future, at present it has become especially barbaric, which is of course not news. These other “impoverished” countries generally have much more historic and developed cultures, ways of handling themselves, etc.
Also, it’s not like “capitalism” was proven and tested before “it” came to be. It has been an incredibly complex process. And it’s not that “it” even will be replaced at some single moment. It’s always a process, and this particular process is already underway.
Notwithstanding that, the social problems arising from extreme inequality (with its roots in a type of capitalism that lacks empathy for people) are very real. I see them all the time in homeless people living beside the freeway when I visit LA or under the underpasses in SF. Here in the UK there is a growing group of working people who have had to choose between heating and eating this winter[1]. I’m not sure they feel like they have been elevated out of poverty.
[1] The guardian has been running a series of “Heat or Eat Diaries” where people document this situation eg https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/feb/14/heat-o...
Don't forget to blink once in a while, might not be seeing things clearly.
Usually “only works in theory” is applied to the other economic systems which tend to sell high on the idea of equality, but devolve into the same problems of haves and have-nots.