Capitalism is the worst economic system, except for all the others humanity has tried. The British historian EJ Hobsbawm had a great phrase that sums up how the system works: "capitalism saws off the tree branch upon which it sits." That's why a bit of socialist dilution of the system's more predatory features: a wealth tax (as in the Netherlands and Switzerland), high enough marginal income tax rates to finance public goods that everyone wants (public safety, clean air, infrastructure that doesn't rot away in 10 years, decent schools, healthcare), anti-trust laws that prevent artificial scarcity through monopoly or oligopoly, which Adam Smith called "merchants meeting to conspire against the public." Under Teddy and Franklin Roosevelt the USA began to figure this out. Since Reagan the USA has unlearned these simple principles that most advanced capitalist nations learned at different times since WWII. That's why it's reverted to being what it would have been without the Roosevelt family: a plutocrats' plantation. This last point proves that pure capitalism without state intervention and regulation reverts to its precedessor: feudalism. Feudalism is a highly versatile institutional cross-dresser: it dresses itself up in new clothes each generation when political systems don't have democratic accountability.