I'm absolutely sure.
Unfettered capitalism is an economic system. It's morally neutral, and subject to great greed, or great altruism, or anything in between. Greed is a personal trait or motivation, and defined as "excessive or rapacious desire, especially for wealth or possessions."
You have committed a category error. If you complain about peoples' personal traits and motivations, I'm listening. But complaining about the mechanism available to them, which is also available to people with much nobler aspirations, presumably such as yourself? Makes no sense.
And I assume you can describe the economic system you'd like people to not be greedy in. I'm genuinely interested, and extra points for historical examples of it being implemented and leading to better outcomes than we currently have.
Doesn't the mechanism dictate the scope and influence the realization of one's potential greed? The simple example is that communism saps ingenuity and boldness because it lacks a payoff, so conversely, capitalism rewards it and possibly requires it. Great.
Why is it always brought up as the only other competing idea? I actually appreciate you not going there, but then at the end, you make a bizarre offer of extra points for something totally absurd. Why would a better alternative have a past sample without it then becoming the predominate system? Just because it hasn't been attempted yet doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
And for those of you who went straight to communism and/or socialism, I'm going to need you to do better. That is lazy. Capitalism is better than communism? Cool. And gooey dog food tastes better than pigeon shit. Not really a flex.
The US once had "unfettered capitalism", ca. 1890, and we had poisons in products, Robber Barons, monopolies ... the System reacted to add in some fetters.
The poisons in the products now are simply legal, not lacking in poison. Monopolies are being attempted at every turn, and a vast majority of each industry is comprised of fewer and fewer companies. Workers have, are, and will always be exploited as much as they possibly can be, short of the companies exploiting them getting in trouble (more specifically experiences consequences that harm their bottom line).
What at all is different today than with 1890??? I don't see anything.
All that to say, capitalism with caps/limits (real caps/limits) would be fantastic. I'm reading from you guys that greed is inherent.....I agree. But with that being the case, the argument is to have a system that rewards greed and greatly rewards unethical greed? What? Please explain that.
How about a system that knows greed exists and those who pursue great wealth tend to want more and more (greed) and it becomes less about the money and more about the power or drive or whatever positive spin you want to put on it? How about a system that makes great wealth asymptotic? The closer you get to the sun ($100 million, $1 billion, whatever), you're actually taxed on what you gained (even just an increase in net worth), and you never actually getting to that number? One lifetime of wealth. If your offspring want to be billionaires, they can make it on their own like you did.
There are so many more nuanced ideas, rather than "capitalism > communism".
The most ideal economic system for the most people that still motivates innovation, but still helps the disadvantaged, probably hasn't been attempted yet. Maybe the wealthy don't want a big change, while mastering the status quo. Maybe I'm talking out of my ass and am being silly.
I know a greedy handful of 'leaders' taking advantage of the masses, whether as a political party in the eastern bloc or as a super-rich handful of entrepreneurs in the bay area, isn't the answer. But the answer isn't in the rearview mirror, either. And it's pretty silly to expect it to be.
