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by jack_h 309 days ago
I tend to be in the camp that believes capitalism will generally produce better results than socialism but it will not produce anything close to a utopia. However, I don't believe capitalism is a stable economic system within a democratic society. It will inevitably lead to some results that are repugnant to the electorate who will advocate for political action to prevent such outcomes from occurring in the future. This will lead to stronger government authority and increasing market manipulation which will (potentially) prevent those outcomes but simultaneously it can produce different negative outcomes[1]. In the end it seems as though despite good intentions we end up with a system that nobody understands, nobody is satisfied with, and nobody can fix. I suppose it's like software engineering in a way, we want perfection but instead we are constrained by trade-offs and we never reach a state that everyone is happy with.

[1] A classic example is rent control which tends to lead to shortages.