Asklemmy

There are a lot of good answers here. My perspective is that captialism generally doesn't serve the common person, and that essential services should under no circumstances be privatized.

Captialism is a race to the bottom in terms of cost, but this can only be achieved by sacrificing quality of goods, or by underpaying workers after a certain point.

For instance, look at the vape industry as a microcosm for captialism. A new need/desire was identified by the market. Everyone and their dog tried to capitalize on this by creating shops that met this demand. Shop owners took out ridiculous loans, didn't get their supply chains organized etc. Eventually the ones that were smart or lucky enough survived, while everyone else lost their shirts. Tada. Streamlined industry. Now that this is achieved, and vape juice is highly substitutable, the only way to compete and still make the same amount of revenue is to:

1. Lower prices in hopes of attracting customer while providing the same product. This is risky, so generally not done.

2. Find cheaper products of poorer quality and sell them hoping your consumers don't notice or don't care.

3. Underpay your workers.

Eventually, you end up with an Amazon esque scenario where workers are paid in dog shit, and products suck. while you get a streamlined production line, a lot of people get hurt establish it and maintaining your competitive advantage. Finally, the vape market crashed after the hype and even more people lost money.

Now repeat this process with something as vital as healthcare (which again is relatively substitutable). The system only worships the allnmighty buck and doesn't give a shit for people's well being.

In addition to sustainability concerns others have mentioned, capitalism is also inherently unjust. You earn money by having money and many of those who work the hardest are also the poorest.

Capitalism has been touted as superior to the alternatives (Socialism, Communism, etc) b/c it has been claimed to be "self-regulating" and "self-correcting" and "even if we don't understand why, it fixes itself"--basically the only choice among bad ones that, given our collective small brains, has any chance of sustaining itself and society in the absence of an ability of individuals or government to do so intentionally.

What it really is is an opportunity to stay anonymous while gaming the system, all the while convincing everyone else that they too can game the system (thereby being gamed). It is not a net benefit to society when taken to extremes.

Capitalism is great for the consumer in the micro. If there is a coffee shop on your street that sucks, and you start a coffee shop two blocks away to compete with it with your better coffee, you are participating in the version of capitalism that "works as intended."

It doesn't work in the macro. When, instead of continuing to manage your mom & pop business that barely breaks even, you vertically integrate, buy up or otherwise destroy your competition, and then reduce the quality of your product to bare minimums in favor of profits and shareholder value and growth, you take capitalism to an extreme that makes everyone else (the consumers, the workers, the would-be-competitors) have a worse quality of life.

People prefer better quality of life. Capitalism in the modern age is so far in that macro extreme that it no longer makes people's lives better. East Palestine train derailment as an example... why would they prioritize safety over cost cutting? Bam, a town is cancerous. It's not unreasonable for people to point at a corruptible system and blame it for the corruption that exists.

Problem is, people are corruptible, so whatever alternative we think is better, someone will come along and ruin it for personal gain.