Wow, interesting point. Not sure I totally agree -- but it made me have the amusing thought:

"Maybe we need metacapitalism."

I would argue the social-democracies of Europe are exactly what that is. The idea the free market can address so many things better than any other economic model, but maybe ruthless profits shouldn't drive health care.

Agreed. The market needs to be well regulated in order for it to be tuned for human well-being rather than just greed. It's clear that ruthless profits can't be your optimizing function when it comes health care, housing, education, and environment.

So, when did communism go away?

>That's why capitalism is in trouble. No rival.

Isn't this an oxymoron? Isn't regulated free market competition a foundational principal of capitalism?

The point I'm making here was well understood in the post-WWII era. Here's the cartoon version: "Meet King Joe".[1] The more serious version, "Despotism".[2] The hard sell version, "How to lose what we have."[3] All of these were produced for industrial companies.

It's worth understanding how this was viewed by the generation that won WWII.

[1] https://archive.org/details/MeetKing1949

[2] https://archive.org/details/Despotis1946

[3] https://archive.org/details/InOurHan1950_3

wow!! thank you for bringing up these videos.

seems also then the american elite lost the way -- engaging in financial engineering rather than actual production.

Nope. Private capital allocation decisions are the foundation. It is a mistake to mix this with wishful thinking. Anticompetitive incentives and behavior are a natural emergent property on top of the foundation (network effects, platform effects, last mile dynamics, dumping, hell even economies of scale are intrinsically anticompetitive at the same time as they are intrinsically beneficial). Regulation to restore competition amid these natural anticompetitive tendencies can keep them in check and most people would agree this is generally a good idea -- but most people don't make the capital allocation decisions and most people don't learn about the world except through media controlled by people who do, so not only are the regulations 3 stories above the foundational principle, they are doubly insulated from effectively checking the dark forest on the second story by the very nature of the foundation itself.

capitalists have rivals, but capitalism does not

When the rest of the industrial world is destroyed, it turns out to be a pretty good time for your workers.