So what is the problem, then?

Capitalism controls a majority of the goods and services in our world.

At the same time, we have huge systemic issues — the climate emergency, the disappearance of the middle class, the ongoing extinction event that threatens our whole biosphere — which aren’t being dealt with in the slightest.

Capitalism has the steering wheel firmly in its grasp, and it is driving the bus off the cliff, while its supporters either deny that it is capitalism’s fault, or even that there is any problem at all.

So what do you think the cause of the issue is?

The question should, therefore, seek to identify what the problem with the American economic system actually is, and until we actually have an answer to that question, the right course for the future will elude us.

It appears you have no idea what the actual problem is — you just know it isn’t capitalism!

Now, I don’t think most of the people who are espousing “socialism” have a good idea of what it is either — I think after generations of seeing any possible economic idea involving either justice or compassion derided as “socialism”, that young people are desperate for some sort of hope that the future isn’t going be some horrible dystopian wasteland, and leap onto “socialism” as the only alternative offered to them.

I would indeed say that it is again capitalists who have put everyone who disagrees with their agenda into the “socialism” box.

But when it comes down to it, it’s clear that capitalism, the system that has a single metric, “profitability”, can never ever get us out of this mess, and some sort of system that values the environment, society, community, individuals and their well-being over money is the only solution. And such systems are generally some variety of “socialism” even if they aren’t pure Marxist socialism as it was conceived of over a century ago.