this post was submitted on 11 Sep 2023
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Capitalism isn't the "best system we've got", though... it isn't even the system we are all using right now.
We've never operated in anything like a "purely" capitalist economy, and the socialist policies most western countries have put in place are wildly popular and few people would want to live without them.
Countries that intelligently choose when and where and what things should be operated on a capitalist basis, have better outcomes.
Healthcare? Not something anyone should make money off of. Basic housing, food, water, power... these should be immune to market forces.
At the same time, capitalism drives fantastic technological and social innovation within its swimlane. We just have to pre-define what things people should be able to make money doing.
Capitalism =/= markets.
Socialism =/= public services.
Markets are much older than capitalism, and socialism is a very simple economic idea, being the collective ownership of the means of production by the workers.
Capitalism guides innovation towards increasing profits for capitalist, hardly “innovative”. The USSR was the first to the Moon, after being a feudalistic society, thanks to socialism.
I wonder if those accomplishments were meant to happen if they hadn't had an ideological enemy in the 'capitalist west'.
Your point isn't completely invalid, but it's a circular argument. Whatever the external force was, the system had the ability to complete the objective.
One could actually argue that sending a person to the moon didn't directly achieve anything for the people, so that wouldn't necessarily have been a goal by itself anyway and was a waste of resources.