this post was submitted on 22 Sep 2023
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You're missing the point.
The "villain" in this situation is a system that allows a minority of people to attain huge amounts of wealth and power and incentivizes them to keep increasing both as much as possible without regards for others. It's not the people that follow the incentives.
Unfortunately one of the incentives when you're part of the owning class is wanting to perpetuate the system: it's working pretty well for you.
Individual members of the owning class can be great people. But as the original comment stated: most people will usually put their own interests above yours. The problem isn't that they do so, the problem is that their interests are in opposition to yours.
The analysis isn't (as you seem to think) at the level of "you're part of the owning class, therefore you're evil and we hate you", but "there should be no owning class, its existence leads to needless conflict and suffering".
Let's not get it twisted though: while the real villain is capitalism, it's always one class that does all the stealing, and the lying, and the gaslighting, and the manipulating, and the cheating.
Power corrupts.
I want to first point out that the government being corruptible is not a problem that capitalism just solves. Almost all countries today are capitalist, and that doesn't prevent their governments from being totalitarian or corrupt or mismanaging their resources (Russia as an example).
The government still has all the power. But now there's a small group of people who can influence that power (let's not kid ourselves - mainly through corruption) to the detriment of everyone else.
A centrally managed economy is not the only alternative.
Workers of an organization can be the owners of that organization, rather than a few wealthy elites or the government. That way, they see the fruits of their labor rather than it being syphoned off. They have a say in how the organization is run, they can vote on who manages it and replace them when the way it's managed is bad for the workers.
Let's say ownership of a company automatically goes from its founders to all workers (this might well include the founders) when it reaches a certain size.
What would incentivize anyone to try to start a company in such an environment? Why not guarantee the founders a certain percentage of the profits even if they decide to stop working when the company changes ownership? Where does the capital come from to build a company in the first place? Government - hear me out. Taxes still exist, and continue to pay for things like infrastructure and healthcare and education and housing (these things are probably better managed by government than markets). And part of the tax revenue goes into an investment fund that is managed locally (think city, and/or county level). Citizens have direct voting power over what projects get financed with their taxes.
More pragmatically, a first (I would say reasonable) step would be to limit the amount of power an individual can get. Nobody needs a billion dollars to live, much less hundreds. Change the incentives: implement aggressive progressive taxes.
Heavily tax vacant houses and invest in affordable housing. Stop subsidizing the aviation industry and the fossil fuel industry and the meat industry and instead invest in healthcare and education and public transport and farmers.
Capitalism is a nightmare without regulation. Simply start by adding more (good) regulation and enforcing it consistently.