Leftism

Does this imply that you have a system that can’t be abused?

Obviously not.

Or more probably the level of possible abuse is “less” in some way?

I make no claim about the level of abuse. Society will always have problems. The question is how we solve them. I think that political and economic democracy are necessary to give people a fair say, in many ways. Without economic democracy, we have the situation we have now: A democracy in name only. Economic power is too easily converted into political power.

What kind of democracy has people spend most of their life working for undemocratic institutions, which they depend on for food, clothing, house, etc.? Is it really a democracy if say you're in west Virginia and your only opportunity to earn a living is to work in a coal mine? Your material reality necessitates voting in the interest of your employer, and against your own. How free is that voter to really, meaningfully participate in democracy, as we understand it?

I'd also argue that economic democracy is even necessary for a well informed public. Poor people send their kids to shitty schools. It won't be until there isn't generational poverty that we'll fix that.

The idea of assigning some people’s votes as having more weight can be necessary to avoid a tyranny of the majority deciding things outside of their knowledge set too…

How’s that work with the EC and people like say, tfg?

That's a very shallow analysis, parts of which socialists have already responded to since Marx himself. First, it's a little silly to just wave away changing the -isms, as you put it. It would change things a whole lot if we changed from capitalism to feudalism. Likewise, I suspect you do not actually understand how radical a change many socialists actually want, otherwise I don't see how you can possibly think this.

Second, your implied distinction between politics and the economy is one that we on the left generally reject, and have for centuries. Marx wrote about the "political economy," recognizing that the two are actually inseparable, despite the neoliberal proclivity to pretend that they are. Put another way, many of the policy suggestions you list are actually very popular, and yet they don't happen. Researchers have measured this phenomenon.. The policies that wealthy people want correlate with what actually happens, whereas those that are popular have no correlation. Quote from that study:

Economic elites and organized interest groups play a substantial part in affecting public policy, but the general public has little or no independent influence.

Your suggestions will not happen so long as there is a class of people who own most of the things. That is the realistic analysis of our political economy. That's the analysis we on the left bring that you're missing -- an explanation for why, in our supposed democracy, we have decidedly undemocratic outcomes. We will never legislate away the problems of capitalism because the capitalists have more power than we do.

Finally, you have this baseline assumption throughout your comment that things just fundamentally are what they are, and slapping a few labels won't realistically change them. We have a term for this too! The late great Mark Fisher used the term "capitalist realism" to describe your attitude, famously saying that "it is easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism." That's what you're doing. Even when talking to people who are explicitly proposing an alternative to capitalism, you are just... dismissing it? Waving it away? You're definitely not engaging with it.

I hope that learning that Fisher wrote a whole book about what you're doing, or learning that you're making arguments writers from the 1800s were already critiquing, or even that I took the time to write this whole thing out to you, piques your interest in actually looking into what leftists have to say. Like actually, meaningfully engaging with it, not making a comment that is obviously the beginning of an argument, only to end the comment metaphorically throwing your hands up, which you've now done twice. We write about, think about, and try to organize around these ideas because we want the world to be better. It's something I personally take seriously. I encourage you to take it seriously too, even if you don't agree.

The material realities of someone making 7.25 (which I will concede is a little bit of a strawman, most people make more but not much) is very different than someone making 100/hr. The petit bourgeois exist for a reason. They're still exploited but only to a point. They're "commoners" that benefit from the status quo and wish to uphold it. They have it good enough and can relate to the disadvantaged people's plight insofar as it allows them to dismiss their criticisms as being lazy, not working hard enough, bootstraps, yada yada. They're a foil and a buffer between the proletariat and the bourgeoise. You can point to them to say the exact things you're saying right now

So are your bullshit numbers

I agree that it sounds like you have a mutually beneficial relationship with your company. I'm curious, do you have a union in your workplace? I do have a point to this question, I swear.

Don't believe that the company will struggle without you. In capitalism, you are replaceable. For the record I don't believe that, I think you have extremely valuable skills that would be desirable in any society or economic system. I don't need to know anything about you for me to say that, because everyone is inherently valuable to society. What is the difference between you quitting and you being fired, to the company? Effectively none, because capitalism requires a pool of labor that they can pull from as a threat to keep people in line instead of questioning the status quo. Why else would you think companies fire union organizers?

You, personally, are in a good situation. There are multiple engineers that are not, and will jump on the opportunity to take your job because people in the labor pool are second class citizens with no assurances of their basic needs. This precarious position is a threat to every single person in the working class. You are only a few paychecks away from homelessness.

Socialism, by comparison, ensures everyone's basic needs are met. They are guaranteed the right to healthcare, housing, education, food, and access to a job. Companies can still exist in socialist societies, however they are not owned privately by any individual. Instead, they are owned by the workers. There are a lot of different socialist experiments that have done this in different ways, I highly recommend you do some research about this; it's actually pretty fascinating if you like reading about politics. One very American example of worker ownership are worker cooperatives.