Capitalism is the driving force behind everything you enjoy about your modern, comfortable life.
This is what largely I am arguing against. I think the benefits of capitalism have been proven, but the negatives are largely brushed aside. I think this form of capitalism is dangerous (and I should have been more explicit about that in my original comment). My original comment was to get rid of publicly traded companies and remove wall street altogether. Private companies can continue to exist and compete but the profit motive to solely deliver growth and profit to public shareholders has distorted the whole system into pro-forma income sheets at the best and to outright devastation and exploitation at the worst. Private companies would be largely in check because they wouldn't grow unchecked by raising capital they don't have by going public. In so doing, they wouldn't be "in debt" (overloaded non-technical sense of debt) to shareholders. This would lead to more sustainability and less growth over everything mindset. The knock on effects I mentioned would contribute to a more just and fair system.
That said, I am not an economist, but I would like to see this world exist for future generations. And this economic system isn't it.
Why would a for profit company invest into basic research without a clear goal to monetizing that research while their competitor is spending that money on marketing?
"Why would a for profit company invest into basic research without a clear goal to monetizing that research while their competitor is spending that money on marketing?"
The only form of R&D spend that cannot be monetised is that which fails to better meet consumer demand, which is a purposeless waste of money.
Rephrase your question so it make sense.
I get a monthly magazine called Jacobin that is filled with bough criticisms and alternatives
Trying to find people who aren’t either fundamentally greedy or barely hanging on is nearly impossible so it’s just mostly people exploiting each other.
I am personally trying to build a cooperative that is mutually owned by employees, and it’s structurally really hard because the legal system doesn’t know anything about how to do that. The entire system is built on the assumption of profit maximization. You don’t go into a banking situation, without telling them the type of business, and the type of profit that you expect. so in every single aspect of attempting to do commerce in the United States, or worldwide today, the default functional system, which everybody uses, because there is no alternative system to use, makes it effectively impossible to do something else without totally building it yourself from scratch.
But that's because you're not just banking with someone, you're asking them for a loan. That money has a cost associated with it so the bank quite reasonably wants an indication you're able and likely to repay it.
Waste is waste under any economic model: if the input costs in whatever form they take exceed outputs the endeavor isn't viable.
You can't go up to people and say "hey, I have this incredible idea for an art project, please give me enough money for 5 years go work on this". A few artists can, but most a) won't convince other people that their specific idea is as good as it might be, and b) can't create enough publicity to actually get enough people's eyes on their ideas.
Your "it's not great if people don't want to pay for it" might work in a system where every human can talk to every artist and compare everything. But that is not our world. There will always be people who are undiscovered, there will always be people who could create great things, but don't have enough money.
But I don't think a capitalist can actually understand this.