Why do so many defend capitalism?

Because the people that “rage against capitalism”, tends to put a lot of rollover effects occurring due to no guardrails. Onto being a fault of capitalism, rather than a fault of government.

We could tax inheritance 100% and most of the rollover issues are gone.

We could provide healthcare, public transportation and many other services. While maintaining a capitalistic based system.

Infinite growth is not a necessity of capitalism, that’s a necessity for consumer franctic societies.

Right now there’s a lot of countries looking towards Scandinavian models, they’re capitalistic by nature and imo still lack guardrails against intergenerational wealth. Inequality is skyrocketing everywhere, but that’s not a fault of capitalism. It will happen in unregulated capitalistic setups, but capitalism is really effective at guiding companies into providing the goods the populations need - And we have not theorised a better system yet.

Capitalism has always sounded great in theory, just the way you described. But in practice it has never worked, it always results in the accumulation of wealth in few hands, who can then use that power to subvert democracy and get their way.

Why do you think inheritance, wealth, etc is taxed too little? Because wealthy elites have abolished and prevented those taxes through lobbying/corruption. Many countries had the exact social democracy model you describe, but abolished and privatized these systems because rich people paid the media and politics to make it happen.

Not to mention this analysis focuses only on material wealth. Capitalism brings with it a complete alienation, communities don’t own their land, people don’t own their work, and everything that was once a common good is slowly commodified and robbed of its soul. Art, music, relationships, capital fijds a way to monetize it eventually. But now we have online shopping and fast food! Hooray, happiness achieved!

we have not theorized a better system yet

That’s an incredibly offensive claim. You just spat in the faces of nearly two centuries worth of academics and thinkers in myriad disciplines that have worked tirelessly, in the face of often violent or even fatal backlash from capital powers, to create and implement alternative concepts. Not to mention humans have experimented with various ways of living together for our entire history before capitalism.

it always results in the accumulation of wealth in few hands, who can then use that power to subvert democracy and get their way.

But that’s not really capitalisms fault. We’ve seen higher degrees of inequalities in socialist countries and feudal economies could be claimed the inequality is a part of the design.

It’s due to a lack of government rules.

Capitalism brings with it a complete alienation, communities don’t own their land, people don’t own their work

It opens up for the possibility of either owning your work or owning the value (wage) of your work. 2 millennia ago, when everyone worked in their own workshops and sold to the market, that was ultimately also a capitalistic economy.

Communities now can own their land, because everything is a commodity. Under other systems, the government, noble or other highly ranked owns the land and leases it out - We could argue that’s still happening under capitalism, through property taxes.

I’m curious if you can expand on the alienation.

That’s an incredibly offensive claim

Yet you’re not highlighting any, because capitalism is a tad too efficient. The alterations we seek out to do, does not stop capitalism; Just changes the goals of it and the late stage setup to move more power/capital back to the people.