this post was submitted on 26 Jun 2025
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Agreed. I feel as though capitalism is a good option for things which can have elastic demand. Luxury items, entertainment, etc can all benefit from a competitive market because I have the luxury of not needing to buy them. On the other hand, I do absolutely need food, housing, and healthcare in order to live. Applying supply and demand principles when demand must be inelastic only leads to people getting hurt.
My dream system would be one in which, as a baseline, all human requirements for survival are provided no matter the situation, and where currency is only used for luxuries.
I mostly agree with you, it's just that historically governments have been really bad at producing some necessities of life.
I really wouldn't want anybody other than a government providing clean drinking water. I think they've proven they're great at that, and private industries just mess it up in various ways. OTOH, governments historically haven't been very good at producing crops. It seems like every time a government wants to fully take over farming, the result is a famine. Having said that, farming subsidies, and programs where governments are guaranteed buyers of farmed stuff is pretty great.
It really pisses me off that some of the most right-wing, most anti-government people in the US are farmers, and farmers are absolutely supported by the government. There are certainly some flaws in the system. The corn subsidy being so high is ridiculous, and results in things like high fructose corn syrup being available nearly free, and so it's in everything. OTOH, it's thanks to government intervention that the US is absolutely secure when it comes to price shocks for food items. Almost everything is made domestically. And, while there can be quirks like egg prices being high (which again is due to unregulated / badly regulated monopolies) the overall system is very stable.
Housing is another thing that is iffy if it's 100% government made. The awful apartment blocks of former soviet republics are an example of that. But, unregulated housing construction is even worse. This is one where you need to find some balance between fully capitalist and fully government run.
Mostly though, right now, the governments of the world just need to start cracking down on capitalist businesses that are harming the public. The EU is at least trying, but the results have been mixed. The US was starting to do something under Biden and then Trump took over and... wowza. I think the recent NYC election shows that the population is well to the left of the democratic party establishment, and that cracking down on big business could be a huge win in future elections.