This probably is the smarter move to be honest. It'd be nice if you could admit your flaws and everyone else would say "it's okay we're flawed too we understand" and we can all move on.

But in reality if you admit you made a mistake, some people would use that as a weapon against you, and everyone else would decide not to get involved in defending your flaws because it's too much trouble.

Or instead you can double down and some people will get annoyed, but you haven't created a vulnerability and you get to keep soldiering on.

I really wish we lived in the first scenario, but honestly most people aren't actually willing to behave in that way. So by default we end up with the second scenario.

And the more bad decisions they make, the less wealthy they become and vice versa.

It's almost as if this self-correcting dynamic had something to do with efficient resource allocation and general prosperity; but what do I know, I'm but a simple backyard furnace operator.

Except they don't became any less wealthy because of this. Their products might become crappier, but again, in most cases this doesn't matter because the people making decisions about buying products are not the people using them. That's why most enterprise software is so terrible, btw.

Blaming human nature on capitalism?

Is this something that magically doesn't happen in top down managed economies?

Care to point us to an non-capitalistic economy where this type of irrational behaviour doesn't happen?

It is the popular fad to be ignorant of the rampant mismanagement that is always prevalent in Communist countries. People should read the books written by people who defected from the Soviet Union to get an idea of just how bad it can get. “The Liberators: my life in the Soviet Army” by Viktor Suvorov is a good one. And it can be read online: <https://archive.org/details/liberatorsmylife0000suvo>

>Communist

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma

“Not capitalist” does not mean “communist”. There are plenty other systems out there. And even for what many folks call communism you’ll find examples of much better efficiency - China for example has been developing at speed never seen in nominally capitalist countries.

Much better efficiency - sure, if you don't believe in ghost cities and ignore the real estate hyper-bubble (which is certain to come crashing down).

So objective, easily verifiable gains - like the life expectancy, which is now longer than in USA - don't matter because of ghost towns? :-D

What are the other systems that are actually being used?

barter at the very small scale

some top down goes on it troubled countries

but by far and away the advantages of capitalism are more than its deficits

it responds to and is driven by human natures, not the other way around

China is in fact a capitalist country, despite the "Communist" in it's party's name.

Partly. Most of the Chinese people have no private property rights.

The wealth would be a runoff effect of the higher corporate position, no?

your issue should be with corporate hiring practices, not the economic system they exist in.

Aha, but the issue is that the wealthy people are choosing who to hire/promote.