[allthatglitters]

>Means of production are private (factories, etc) and the owners as almost all players in capitalism take care to maximize _their_ profit and not society's well being.<

No one forces you to purchase what's "produced". If you purchased a Windows computer - and so helped Mr. Gate's well being - that was your choice! The list of examples is long. As to "Windows" - whether society is better off ...

[dllthomas]

Though for a time, because of crapware subsidies, often computers with Windows installed would be cheaper than the identical computer without it. I think this is no longer the case but TBH I haven't actually checked in a while. In that case, "forcing" is probably too strong a word, but I'm being asked to pay if I want to avoid helping Mr. Gate's net worth (I think his well-being was plenty taken care of before I started making any purchasing decisions). I'm not sure to the degree this changes any of the reasoning above, but it was at least a little strange.