this post was submitted on 23 Feb 2026
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See, I think capitalism can work, we just need way more controls. Taxes that prevent billionaires from ever happening. Incentives for corporations to invest most of their profits into R&D.
Make smaller profit margins necessary to stay afloat. That means they either need to cut prices and/or invest in people (which is essentially what R&D is).
Actually enforce antitrust laws. Make forming a corporation, let alone a conglomerate, unpalatable compared to forming an NPO.
The biggest poison is the profit-driven media landscape (traditional and social). Particularly "news". Something needs to happen there, first.
Put a 500% tax on political contributions from PACs and a hard cap on total political donations from an individual (that's actually enforced and loopholes closed up).
Capitalism without corporations. Without billionaires. With strong regulation and very limited lobbying. It could work. It'll never happen, but it could work...and it's probably a necessary stepping stone to full blown socialist utopia.
But that's literally the problem right there. We don't lack control because there isn't enough scientific knowledge or because the people naturally oppose this control. We don't and we won't have control because the capitalists, who happen to be in power, profit more from fossil fuels whose supply they can control than from renewables which are endless and affordable.
If you want an example of somewhere where there is this control, I can point you towards China, the manufacturer of some 95% of the world's supply of photovoltaic modules and the spearhead of electrification. In China it's not capitalists in power, it's the people through their communist party, and this results in, well, actual policy.
Your comment, to me, reads like "we don't need to abolish absolutist monarchy, we just need controls on the rights of the serfs". Like, it's literally the system preventing these controls, and once abolished, the problems sort themselves out rather automatically.
Billionaires are hard to prevent. Musk for example is a billionaire because tesla has been successful, you couldn't prevent that with taxes on him as the value is in the company he owns a significant portion of.
I think overall you have good ideas, but they're hard to implement
The problem with all those measures aiming to make things fairer, is that the ones able to implement them are the ones benefitting from the most. This directly for the political measures, and indirectly for the corpo ones (due to the political measures)
The only way this is being changed is with a revolution or being forced due to protests. But social media is not only profit driven, but also an excellent way to control the flow of information.
And with the surveillance state that every country is seemingly moving towards this is only gonna get better.
I totally agree with you. Its obvious to anyone that "capitalism" as most people know it is super simple on the surface: I have thing or skill. You want things or skill. Depending how many people want thing or skill, I get paid fairly for it. To be honest, for me (healthy, able bodied and have a support network) I don't mind working and getting paid fairly for my skills; its a normal part of human life to work to get food. Granted, I'm in a VERY lucky minority. There needs to be Norway style welfare for the old, sick, and unable to work. As far as dumb/ignorant people (be honest, you've met them) who are able bodied but just can't do anything useful, I'm not sure what to do about them.
But then we have money in politics, monopolies, 1 person (fucking Rupert) owning every media outlet, and the system quickly falls apart.
This is famously not how capitalism works. What you're describing is primitive manufacture as it happened in medieval workshops: a class of tradespeople who owned their tools and their workshop and sold the fruits of their own labour by themselves.
Capitalism works differently because the people with the skills don't own the tools or the workshop, the workshops and tools are owned by people who happen to have generational wealth, called the capitalist class. These people don't have skills, they have money, and with this money they acquire means of producing things, like factories. Then, the skilled workers who don't have the money to buy such factories, enter into "free and voluntary" contracts (not so free or voluntary when unemployment exists) in which they get paid not according to how much they produce, but according to how much they can manage to scrape from the capitalist owner, which always gets a profit from the labour of said people.
This has been well-understood for 200 years since the first formal definitions of capitalism appeared, what you're describing is 13th century primitive capitalism
I envision more of a hybrid utopia...strong social programs (potentially even UBI), paid for largely by taxes by businesses.
Income taxes are straight-up bullshit and intended solely to fuck the lower and middle classes. I exponentially incrementing taxes on additional real estate. I want higher taxes on luxury goods. I want a higher gas tax and further incentives for green energy and public transit expansions.
Middle class, especially, gets all of the stick and barely any of the carrot. That needs to change.
But I also think essential industries should also be entirely socialized (like healthcare) or implement point-solutions to bolster the bottom 90% when markets get all fucky...such as heavily subsidizing first-time homebuyers, government pays x% upto $Y. (While at the same time also promoting more development of high- and medium- density housing, and transit to service it)
Anyway, that's my utopia. I don't think capitalism is inherently evil. I don't think a true socialist utopia can exist unless we are post-scarcity and solve a lot of other blockers. I do think that both systems have pros and cons, and some sort of middle-ground needs to be found. One that actually favors the majority of the people.