There are few topics that provide a better intellectual Rorschach test than the economy. Communism is the most appealing if only because it's the natural syste

There are few topics that provide a better intellectual Rorschach test than the economy. Communism is the most appealing if only because it's the natural system of families and of hunter gatherers. Sadly, the 20th century emphatically demonstrated that this system doesn't scale into anything other than a complete disaster. On the other hand, capitalism is brutally horrible. But it's one saving grace is that it does scale. You can run a 2 billion person economy on it and things will work out overall and through time. That is, if you overlook the long time constant, positive feedback loop of the concentration of capital. Eventually just a few guys own all the stuff which is sub optimal. Raw capitalism guarantees winners and losers, and a whole spectrum of outcomes in between. This can be fixed up a bit by first, having government regulation of clear market failure zones, like food, construction and finance etc. And second, having the government collect a reasonable percentage off the top of the economy to subsidize those being squished to death at the bottom. Scandinavia does this best. Sure, they're not perfect, there is no actual perfect solution. The result is an elephant of a system that few people can view in its entirety but most people think they can. Given such a messy, devisive, inscrutable system you have to believe there must be a better way. But there's probably not.