[gowld]

> the water crisis in Flint, Michigan;

This was government not putting the effort in, not capitalism.

> the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan by the United States and its allies in the early 2000s;

Does the Communist invasion of Eastern Europe and Afghanistan count?

> the ongoing destruction of the Amazon rainforest (and the genocide that continues to go hand in hand with it) by ranchers seeking to increase their bottom line;

They are doing that because people want to eat steak.

> - the refusal to pass a TRIPS waiver for the mRNA COVID vaccine that prevents much of the world from accessing the most effective vaccines in a timely manner (or at all);

Your idea is that without getting paid, people will just provide public health work for free, because they .... ?

> the ongoing exploitation and perpetuation of underpaid or outright slave labor in many parts of the world by countries proped up by western colonial powers intent on delivering luxury items to their citizens at relatively low costs (while still reaping massive profits off those sales);

OK at this point it's clear that your problem is with material consumption , not capitalism.

[mchaynes]

> Your idea is that without getting paid, people will just provide public health work for free, because they .... ?

Because it’s the right thing to do, and people like helping each other and doing the right thing. There are other motivating factors for most people over money. Human beings are generally good and generally do the right thing.

[johnthewise]

People are many things at the same time. You can't just count on one aspect and hope things go well all the time. It's like bitcoin network never put in the proof of work and relied on people's word to verify transactions. Any system that is to endure should be resilient and relying on peoples good intentions is not just good foundations. Ideal system should assume people have bad motives and intentions(worst case), then set up incentives for them to produce good outcomes. I'm also certain we mortals can't come up with such an ideal system or anything close to it, look how long it took to come up with rules and incentives to prevent digital double-spend. Best we can hope to do is iterate our way through that direction, otherwise we can't possibly wrap our heads around such a complex and dynamic system and predict its outcomes.