[alexanderstears]

It's important to separate society's tastes, preferences, and incentives with market-based resource allocation.

At the very least, corporations and capitalism give us a productive place to put sociopaths (the alternative is religion, healthcare, government, exile/six feet under). And more communal economic systems seem to work well until the anti-social types take over - North Korea was actually better off than South Korea for awhile after the war and the anti-social types always do take over.

Capitalism does a really good job of making it easier to do more with less. My phone is a weather station, a flash light, a calculator, a camera, a camcorder, etc. and it's cheaper than most Cameras were just 30 years ago. On the flip side, a lot of the materials that make my phone come out of conflict zones and I'm sure that my phone funded some warlord's attack helicopters and that's not great and it's unfortunate that the 'past of least resistance' involves such unsavory things but the solution rests with more capitalism - the warlord needs to demand a higher price or operate the mines and figure out how to build a phone and go legit.