You make a good point, but this system, when not corrupted so bad, is proven great and has lasted the longest. It's capitalism with no compassion that causes problems.

if you inject to capitalism -compassion, sharing, cooperation, limited and intelligent growth, a view of Nature as Sacred.... my friend then you are talking about Linux, not Window$... if you understand what I mean.

On one hand, socialist laws tend to be used as a bandaid to keep capitalism from bleeding to death. On the other hand, if people are selfish, greedy, and lazy, capitalism might be a good idea. I went to college because I was tired of being poor. But it was a socialist community college partially funded by the government.

I wrote about this on another forum, but our elite have damaged or destroyed all the major mechanisms of capitalism through targeted deregulation. They use our lack of economics knowledge about it to convince us that this is what capitalism is in its true form. No, all this is is a capitalist market failure designed to benefit the elite at our expense. While I totally understand why some people are calling for the system to be scrapped (we are horribly misled about what its supposed to look like), I think many will be very very surprised at what this system can do when employed correctly. The system is supposed to run off a framework of regulations intended to protect society's best interests and then the mechanics of capitalism can run freely for social good... not just to enrich the wealthy. If you are wondering specifically what is broken with our current version of capitalism, here it is:

1.) Opportunity: this is supposed to exist for all citizens of a society to be productive in the economy and contribute in the way they know best. The more opportunity, the more innovation there is going to be. But by blocking access to education by excessive cost and restricted availability (i.e. if you grow up in a ghetto), restricting advancement in a career through declining wages and a shrinking middle class, blocking entry into business ownership by cost of entry and legal complexity, we are limiting opportunity. This holds back our whole economy and many who would do a whole lot of social good can't even take the first step. Ideally, this problem should be corrected by wages earned from employment. But at the level its at, government has an economic reason to get involved and keep people from being predestined to live paycheck-to-paycheck and unable to invest in their own future.

2.) Incentive: this is supposed to benefit the people who work the hardest, innovate the best, and have the most good ideas. It is supposed to reward success. But just take a look at our system. Wages and benefits are falling, opportunities aren't there for advancement, where is the incentive for an employee to be productive? The only real incentive is not economic, it is management who are getting more and more abusive to their employees and make them productive through harassment. This is not the proper method and isn't ethical nor is it effective. Similarly, our executives and shareholders say they are paid based on performance of the company, but this is very misleading. They are paid based on the bottom line, not innovation, not the long-term health of the company, just the bottom line. They don't have to innovate at all to do this. It is far easier just to religiously cut costs, outsource, and end up with huge short-term profits that long-term will lead to the destruction of the company. What is needed is regulations on how the company distributes its profits and measures like work-ethic, longevity, education/expertise and contribution to the company being the basis for a paycheck. This will help restore incentive to produce.

3.) Competition: this gets abused with all these subsidies, bailouts and giveaways our government gives out to banks and corporations when we should LET THEM FAIL. We don't prop up any small businesses like this. Apparently government doesn't want those to succeed like the large corporations so they are over-regulated and put in an unfair competitive disadvantage much of the time. A more proper situation would be to give a slight edge to small companies so the normal dynamic would be a company getting rich with their good idea and having their run but then allowing room for somebody else to become rich with their good idea and not take up the entire spotlight if they don't deserve it. Competition further gets messed up with government no-bid contracts, which rewards the entities that gives government the campaign-contribution/bribe and not the one who can provide the best services. We need to get our government out of the economy in this way and just set up the framework for fair competition.

4.) Supply and demand: this got completely messed up with our stupid decision to do away with 150 year old trade barriers that kept jobs local. The elites nicely called this "the global economy". Now we have an unnaturally high supply of labor for companies to choose from, so there is unnaturally high competition for those jobs and companies use this as an excuse to not pay workers what their education and experience would normally dictate. We also have a low demand for products in the US and keeps the local businesses here from performing very well.

5.) Environment: Our government imposes no cost on environmental degradation and the cost of using up natural resources. There needs to be a price of this forced into the economy because these are limited resources and companies WERE NOT the ones who created them. They are technically the property of the state, not the company that is extracting them. Our government should claim full control over these resources and ethically regulate the quantity and speed of their use.

TRUE CAPITALISM DOES-NOT INVOLVE ANY "BAIL-OUTs": IF YR COMPANY FAILs, THEN YR OUT-OF-BUAINESS: NO-BODY GETs A "BAIL-OUT" ...
ONE OF THE GOALs OF OUR MOVEMENT SHOULD BE TO ABOLISH THE CONCEPT OF THE BAIL-OUT: IN THE FUTURE, NO COMPANY SHOULD GET A BAIL-OUT, BECAUSE NO COMPANY IS "TOO BIG TO FAIL"