You craft a set of rules that Capitalism must play within. We have a pretty good set of rules now. No murder, no slaves, no obvious pollution. But there is room for improvement.
My suggestions are... 1. More media diversity (Media ownership rules). 2. Cap political donations to something that everybody can afford. (Say for example no more than $500 per person per year, no company donations)
I also sometimes suggest that the media (and social networks) should be held more accountable for the things they print and broadcast. (it's an unpopular opinion)
America is a lot bigger than where I am in Australia. Here, I'm optimistic that we can see small incremental changes that will help us balance power. regardless of the opinions of the super rich.
With a diverse media, enough pressure can occasionally be applied in key areas.
The question is, how do you stop Capitalism from subverting Democracy and the Media to perpetuate itself? I think one can successfully argue that capitalism is a human-scale paperclip maximizer, but for capital.
> PS: if we wanted to, a democracy could simply make it illegal buy investment property insuring that everybody had somewhere to live. Freeing people from the burden of rent.
Only if the wealthy allow it. You don't have to look very hard to find dead-in-the-water concepts/projects that have the support of a large majority of Americans across the political spectrum, but are hated by the wealthy, and therefore their politician proxies. These tend to die despite public popularity - alas, that's the downside of representative democracy.