Progressivism conquered America a century ago. Antitrust law. Central bank. Income tax. Universal suffrage. Old age pensions. Public education, research grants. National parks. Interstate highways. Welfare, public housing. Equal opportunity employment. Disaster relief. Socialized medicine for the poor and elderly. Workplace safety. Automobile safety and emissions standards. Space shuttle.
Recently, a flirtation with Universal Basic Income.
You're concerned about what? Free Prime delivery?
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/world-population-in-extre...
My dad was a professor of finance in a midwestern college. He'd have students coming up to him saying "I didn't know there even was a case for free markets!"
> "Socialism" requires cooperation, and people do it just fine.
Both socialism and free markets require cooperation. The difference is that socialism requires forcible cooperation, and in free markets the cooperation is voluntary.
Are we going to pretend that free market capitalism and its magical benefits haven't been pounded into all of our heads from every angle from the moment we were being taught anything about how the world works? It's not difficult to understand, it's difficult to see in a world where companies commit crimes and collapse in mountains of debt, but no one goes to jail. Not a situation that Adam Smith would approve of.
The reason the benefits capitalism are spread out to any degree is because there are riots when they aren't, so you need to at least reward the people responsible for putting those riots down through violence, technology, and bureaucracy. Hence, the middle class.
> Socialism, however, requires altruistic behavior, and very few people are consistently altruistic and self-sacrificing for the common good.
"Socialism" requires cooperation, and people do it just fine. Even capitalists are socialist amongst themselves when it comes to keeping out competition.