We have a culture where we’ve been told for decades that market forces and the profit motive are sufficient for running a society. That the market will find a way to give everyone what they need efficiently without problems.

We’ve dispensed with ethics as a basis for human interaction, and the results are exactly what one would expect: a dystopia.

And the people making the most money off this system insist that it’s all for the best and that we should double down on this strategy. Any mention of putting limits on greed and exploitation is met with responses like, “what are you, a socialist?” as if the only two choices for structuring a society are either a rapacious hyper-exploitative capitalism and an oppressive Soviet state, and there’s no other option.

Capitalism needs constraints. Capitalism in the service of society can be a great thing. Capitalism without constraints is a cancer that will destroy everything in the pursuit of profit.

We need to stop painting with the wide brush of "capitalism" like this.

This is not capitalism vs socialism. You are describing neoliberalism.

A good place to start is the Wendy Brown book Undoing the Demos. The subtitle is "Neoliberalism's Stealth Revolution"

There is no way to change and fight back against something when we are so confused what we are even fighting against.

No one is really against market prices. They are against these insane, distorted, neoliberal ideas that apply the efficient market hypothesis, "the market is always right" to non-markets. Or using the efficient market hypothesis as a pseudoscientific moral justification for bad behavior.

Most importantly is that there are a ton of people that actually believe this bullshit.

If a process causes number to go up then the process must be morally good because "the market is always right". Obviously, if the process was morally bad number go down because "the market is always right". This is the 21st century American religion.

Railing against "capitalism" just causes those hypnotized by neoliberalism to completely tune out before you even get to the ism in "capitalism".

> Capitalism needs constraints.

I'd just be happy with one constraint and that is to forbid the crony capitalism that is rampant today.

> We have a culture where we’ve been told for decades that market forces and the profit motive are sufficient for running a society. That the market will find a way to give everyone what they need efficiently without problems.

I don't really think that culture has existed lately, it kind of died out with the 2008 financial crisis. Now it's about naked use of power, whether political or economic.

The problem with constraints on individual freedom (which is essentially what happens when you constrain capitalism) is that no one agrees on what they should be, and therefore a segment of society will not be happy with them, and claim them as tyrannical oppression. Sometimes this is hysterical nonsense, sometimes it has a point.

Ultimately the antidote to unfettered capitalism is sensible policy crafted through political compromise. But largely Western politics itself has skewed towards extremes lately, few have the patience or understanding for this process, they want a quick fix.

It's hyper individualism that is fueling this type of capitalism, the notion that you owe nothing to anyone and other people in society are not your concern, society itself is not your concern, it’s only about what you want etc. It's like a pond, if you follow hyper individualism, you will extract as many fish from the pond as you can, without caring what happens next or others using the pond, and the fish will not be able to reproduce for future generations, others will not be able to get as many fish as they need etc. It needs to be balanced. As you say, there is something in between that can work, we do not need to choose only between extremes.

I don't think any actual socialist would ever argue for an oppressive Soviet state either. They'd want stuff like public firefighters, health care, sewage, roads, etc.

What is capitalism in service of society?

If humans were much more rational this would work better.

The human brain is loaded with exploits, and capitalism being an excellent optimizer quickly finds and uses these exploits. Because they work, and more importantly they are way way easier than creating actual value.

A casino is more profitable than a hospital. Quack medicine sold with sensationalism is more profitable than real medicine. Porn is more profitable than good film or literature. Rage inducing click bait is more profitable than actual news or thoughtful editorial. It’s kind of just thermodynamics. These things require less energy input, and they don’t have to “work” because they exploit security vulnerabilities in the dopamine system instead.

We are hacking each other to death.