Asklemmy

I suggest becoming informed and read about other economic systems yourself. There is a bit of ad hominem in your question. For many the materialist concerns of the current dominant economic system is why people complain. Those complaining aren't the cause and should not be rebuked. The rich are getting richer and the poor; poorer. The chasm between the two only grows wider.

That said, many folks on the political spectrum would at least like to see the US end of neoliberal capitalism and a return to Kantian/welfare economic capitalism. You see flavors of this in European Democratic socialist countries, albeit even those are succumbing to neoliberalisation.

If you get into rights based discussion, many in that spectrum and further left would like to see positive rights enshirined constitutionally as well as the ERA. This would bring about many of those kantian economic mechanisms by default.

For many more on the left, we literally want to seize the means of production and distribute wealth equally among the masses. Bring about socialism to progress to communism. The DSA believes in a change and revolution from within, and have a national platform and a growing base. There are also the PSL, which demands a more revolutionary overthrow of capitalism into communism. Briefly put.

You're coming off fairly condescending. Leftists of many stripes not only have thorough critiques of Capitalism, but offer a wide range of solutions, both legislative and grass-roots.

There may be a lot of ranting, but most of it is based within robust theory and legislative efforts.

Strengthening unions and workers rights laws is almost always advocated for. Weakening the ability for corporations to exploit their workers and the general population/environment is another.

I'm an Agorist, that means I advocate fighting Capitalism from the ground up using grey and black markets to subvert existing Capitalist structures.

So acquiring and distributing pirated materials like college textbooks and otherwise expensive software is one example. Helping people jailbreak/hack their devices to run unofficial software that the corporations don't approve of is another.

There's lots of information out there, don't mistake memes and ranting for empty idealism.

Tax the rich, regulate industry, punish CEOs and boards for crimes committed by corporations.

The youtube channel, Economics Explained, has a lot of great videos on macroeconomic concepts. They recently featured a video on Norway pointing out how it handles its economy near perfectly.

The video explains Norway got pretty lucky, and it's not like every country could straight up copy them and succeed, but the major points are:

1. Their massive natural resource reserves are majority owned by the government. The government puts the profits from this into stable long term investments to benfit the citizens of the country. In many other countries, natural resources have been sold to private companies for a one time payment and private shareholders now benefit from the long term investment.
2. Their government has one of the highest tax rates in the world, even though they earn so much profit from natural resources they could literally have a 0% tax rate. Despite this massive tax rate, Norway has some of the lowest emigration of people and companies. Nobody has fled the country due to high taxes like many fear would happen elsewhere.
3. Their government spends heavily on social welfare and ensuring a high quality of life for all of its citizens, and their companies provide short work weeks and long vacations, which are huge reasons why nobody has left.

I think when people say they hate capitalism, what they mean is they hate working 50 hour weeks at a job they hate for a boss who treats them like dirt for a salary that doesn't even pay their rent while the CEO has more wealth than small nations and spends it on eating endangered animals on their mega yatch with politicians and judges who then pass laws making it legal to hire children and dump garbage into the ocean. They don't really care about private companies and investments, they care about how sociopathic greed has become so normal that it's actively defended.

First off, wealth and power are the same thing and must be dealt with at the same time. So for a start…

1. Aggressive progressive taxation, up to 100% (billionaires - even 9-figure multimillionaires- must never be allowed to exist).

2. Abolish stock markets.

3. All companies must be employee-owned. Employees share equitable ownership of the companies they work within. Profits are shared only among employees.

4. Criminalize political spending, lobbying (aka bribery), etc. Candidates all draw from a public fund and platforms and that is all they may use.

5. Aggressive market regulation to protect competition and prevent consolidation. Our failure to protect the market from excess consolidation and integration is the primary reason we’ve reached the late-stage capitalism hellscape we currently exist within.

Again, this is a start… the tip of the iceberg.

There is a massive amount of leftist documentation on economics. We’re not all communists, but we recognize that any system devoid of regulation/oversight/accountability will always quickly travel rightward and become authoritarian. So the question is what systems and policies can be put in place to ensure not only equity for all, but equity that remains stable indefinitely (or as close as is possible).

Not an answer, but I do want to point out that your question may be missing a crucial point. Primarily: There are different types of capitalism. When people mock or complain about the current economy, you might hear about "late stage capitalism." That's because that's referring to the current type of capitalism that we're operating under. And Bernie Sanders believes in capitalism, too. But his belief is in a different type of capitalism.

This is all to say, when people complain, it may not even be that they want to replace capitalism, but even shifting to a more friendly type of capitalism would significantly remove a lot of strain from workers. I don't mean to imply that that's what the people you're referring to meant, but I think it is important to consider that criticism against capitalism does not necessarily mean a full shift away from capitalism

Return to pre-Reagan tax codes and laws. Bring back the 90% tax rate.

Others have answered your question, but I think you're coming at the problem from the wrong angle.

I used to think about politics and economics how you are now: that there are different systems, and different people disagree on which is the best system, either because of their internal values (liberty, security, equality, prosperity, etc.) or because they believe that one system inherently performs better than another (efficiency, robustness, fairness, etc.).

Becoming a Marxist is realizing that while we, the working people, are sitting around bickering over whether command or market economies are more efficient, whether parliamentary or Presidential systems are better, whether our voting system should be Ranked Choice or Proportional or FPTP, the wealthy - the owning classes, the Capitalists, the ruling class - are stealing from us, are extracting our labor.

Politics is not about different people having different ideas about how to best organize society. Politics is about different groups acting in their material interests. The rich support policies which give them more power in society, while the poor, by all rights, should be doing the same.

I support a system where working people hold all power in society. I don't care how that society is organized aside from that - I have some ideas, but there are smarter people than me for organizing logistics. Power and material interests are the only things that matter; and no system is incorruptible. Society needs to be lead by explicitly and wholly ideological organizations who will resist any attempt to undermine the power and supremacy of the working class, even if it is "legal" or "fair", and they are justified in using whatever means necessary to do so.

Are you unaware of the vast corpus of leftist texts about just this? Do you think leftists are just teenagers on TikTok?

I haven't a lot useful to say among the comments that are already here but I will say most broadly:

Democracy in the work place. Corporations and industries are too big and affect too many people to be governed by individuals that are just there to own it, and make a profit for themselves. Things need to be run for the common good by actually representing all stakeholders fairly.

Incentives for worker ownership of companies to move more major economic decisions into the hands of workers. Mandatory worker representation on boards of directors. Significant wealth and inheritance tax. A nationalized healthcare service. Public ownership of all utilities, including internet service. Bring back programs like the WPA and CCC to rebuild infrastructure. Entirely publicly funded elections. Overturn Taft-Hartley, overturn all "right to work" laws natonwide. I think all these things would help us transition to a more just, inclusive economy. That's what democratic socialism is to me, and it's not just social democracy.

I support any policy that increases competition or against policies that remove competition. Public companies need great justification to merge. The vast majority of the food we buy is run by like 4 companies.

A specific pay-rate ratio between shareholders and all employees. Executives and shareholders should not be getting paid 100x what the bottom employees get paid. This kind of inequality is what is bringing about the collapse. As company profits increase, all employees should get the benefits, not just the execs and shareholders.

there is such a variation from what I see. Some anti capitalist are just anti corporatist while others would throw out the whole idea of buying/selling.

A planned economy ideally, even if that would hardly be immediately doable for most first world countries, as they lack any actual industrial capacity. If all useless jobs were to disappear overnight, most of the population would end up unemployed. In addition a lot of the "economy" of first world countries comes from abusive monetary relationships with third world countries, wish should obviously be ended as soon as possible.

Therefore a transitionary period would be needed, during which we would reindustrialize and develop some level of self-sufficiency. That last part might be less important for the US, as they're unlikely to get sanctioned by themselves.

Eventually a planned economy allows for production for use instead of for sale, providing to each according to their needs, and requiring work according to their abilities.

Personally, I want to see the removal of capitalism, as it is a terrible system, alongside other oppressive systems like the State. Because that doesn’t happen overnight, and it isn’t something congress would ever vote on, I support strong social systems, high taxes on the wealthy and corporations, strong environmental protections, and especially legislation that strengthens communities. Strong worker protections and benefits wouldn’t be bad to see either.

EPI.org has a lot of solutions I support.

Health insurance through work.

Somehow health, vision, and dental insurance are a fixed price. The highest earners pay the exact same as the lowest. However, retirement savings through work are based on a percentage of income. Both of these things benefit higher earners the most

I guess one specific, concrete example would be reversing Citizens United. As I understand it, that could be done either by legislative action or through the judicial, though the former would probably be better.

I think capitalism can work fine if we limit the amount of stuff any one person can own. Having a few million $ seems fine to me, but everything above that leads to problems. I know this sounds like a very simple measure, but it would have huge implications.

Well, for starters:

1. Platforms. I don't believe that the people who create, or invest in, large internet platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, Uber, Booking, Upwork, etc, have a natural or moral right of ownership to said platform. They should certainly receive returns on their investment - but they shouldn't have full operational control. Instead, as the platofrm grows, operational control should slowly transition to its users. eventually, they should have the final say on, in the case of YouTube. what content in acceptable, what procedures should be used to remove unacceptable content, how to appeal, etc.
2. Employment. One of the big issues I see is that employees are under someone's direct control for 1/3 of each day, and have to do what their boss says. And while they technically consented to that relationship, I don't see that consent as freely given, because for most people there isn't a viable alternative. This could be done through more worker cooperative, or encouraging freelancing. Even for people who decide to remain in traditional employment, they should have more official control than they do now.
3. AI. It seems many people here hate AI, but AI does have the potential for large productivity gains. And while, in the past, productivity gains have note resulted in less work, but rather higher GDP, we could always force the issue. After all, people did it ~100 years ago, and the economy didn't collapse because of that.

I'm not from the US but I'll answer anyway.

Like a comrade already commented, I think there's a problem with the way you're thinking of capitalism. It would be useful to know at least a few of these complaints you saw that feel like it's only venting.

Answering your question, I would like to see a planned economy where humans needs are put above profits. We can make a better world for everyone, instead of only for a extremely small part of the world that holds all the power.

That being said, lawmakers cannot enact meaningful changes under capitalism like you suggest. This is not an opinion, it is how the system works. Allende in Chile is the perfect example of this, he tried to reform the system, suffered a coup and was assassinated.

In capitalism the ruling class are the bourgeoisie, that is to say, the ultra-rich, and they as a class have interests that are the direct opposite of everyone else, the working class, the proletariat. This is a crucial part of capitalism, the system that Marx dedicated his whole life studying and describing.

Because of this, every time workers rights are secured or better living conditions are achieved through the system, like free housing for the poor or public healthcare, the ruling class lose some of their power which they will get back eventually. Besides that, it is difficult enough to even get to that point because they will do everything to stop such rights and safety nets from being approved in the first place, as the ruling class can just lobby and buy politicians. It's not a coincidence that public healthcare is not a thing in the US and that so many people are living in the streets, that medication is so expensive all over the world and that the US is so averse to unions still to this day.

Capitalism will literally cook us alive, reform is not the way forward.

I believe that Capitalism is great to get out a country of poverty and developed into a advance economy with wealth build for all of citizens. But just think about this : infinite grow? Does it make sense? For us humans and for the planet? So companies can keep breaking profit records each year. In my opinion that a very unstable system , we have finite resources on earth and we should instead reuse them and make them more reusable so in that case probably infinite grow can make sense. But since that cost money and then it will harm grow and everyone will freak out that a company didn't grow more than last year but still made billions.

Keep the present system but add way more rules.

The price of a good is a percentage of your wealth. For example, bread costs 0.01% of your wealth.

Just like how a fixed-fine legal penalty is a law for the poor, fixed-price goods (especially essentials) are much more burdensome for the poor.

So, capitalism is itself defined more than one way depending on who's talking, and I only have a problem with some versions of it:

In the sense that certain people get to just own stuff, while others have to work, I'd say capping wealth at like 7 digits would be a simple solution. You can save up a few million across a high-earning but normal career, but nobody makes it to 8 unless they're a bigshot. Over time random social mobility should hopefully smooth out the remainder of class distinctions. If not, maybe 6 digits, although some dentists are going to be pissed.

In the sense that we organise our economy around profit motive and competition, I don't have an issue with it because it seems to work well. If you need to buy something, there's always somebody selling it and vice-verse. If you look at history, or at the crazy supply chains that exist to facilitate that, it's quite an achievement.

In the sense that people privately own the means of production, there's a bit of a trick deciding what the means of production even are. A foundry definitely counts, and a toothbrush definitely doesn't, but what about a van, which you could use personally or to transport people? You could licence them separately depending on use, but then you couldn't work as a "rideshare" even if there was a major shortage of taxis, which is dumb red tape. It's far more productive to talk about things in terms of their market value rather than getting any more granular, which is why the law usually does that.