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.