Oh yeah I forgot about that. One of the banks here refunds ATM fees if you have a minimum balance of $2500 (and waives the monthly fee if you have $25,000). Like, my guys, the people who don't have money need that fee waived a lot more. But the bank just wants to make money and that means appealing to rich people.

Wow, I must be banking at the wrong place.

This?

https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/

I've been through at least 5 different kinds of phone chargers over the years. Starting with the olde-fashioned coaxial power connector, then going to various versions of USB, and at least 2 kinds of Apple proprietary connectors. Standardizing on USB-C is great. I just hope that they're able to update it in 10-20 years when USB-C is fully out of date.

I mostly agree with you, it's just that historically governments have been really bad at producing some necessities of life.

I really wouldn't want anybody other than a government providing clean drinking water. I think they've proven they're great at that, and private industries just mess it up in various ways. OTOH, governments historically haven't been very good at producing crops. It seems like every time a government wants to fully take over farming, the result is a famine. Having said that, farming subsidies, and programs where governments are guaranteed buyers of farmed stuff is pretty great.

It really pisses me off that some of the most right-wing, most anti-government people in the US are farmers, and farmers are absolutely supported by the government. There are certainly some flaws in the system. The corn subsidy being so high is ridiculous, and results in things like high fructose corn syrup being available nearly free, and so it's in everything. OTOH, it's thanks to government intervention that the US is absolutely secure when it comes to price shocks for food items. Almost everything is made domestically. And, while there can be quirks like egg prices being high (which again is due to unregulated / badly regulated monopolies) the overall system is very stable.

Housing is another thing that is iffy if it's 100% government made. The awful apartment blocks of former soviet republics are an example of that. But, unregulated housing construction is even worse. This is one where you need to find some balance between fully capitalist and fully government run.

Mostly though, right now, the governments of the world just need to start cracking down on capitalist businesses that are harming the public. The EU is at least trying, but the results have been mixed. The US was starting to do something under Biden and then Trump took over and... wowza. I think the recent NYC election shows that the population is well to the left of the democratic party establishment, and that cracking down on big business could be a huge win in future elections.

The ideals of capitalism were to punish the rich land owners/nobles who were wealthy without ever working and empower the workers who were poor despite working for their whole lives

Where are you getting this from?

Democracy is a form of government.

Capitalism and Socialism are economic systems.

You could have a Democratic Socialist system, if the majority of people wanted it.

You could have an Authoritarian Dictatorship that allowed Capitalism.

It's a little more complex because people are used to living under Capitalism and many people don't really understand Socialism and would fight against their own interest to revert to the status quo, as a result some socialist philosophers have suggested not giving people a choice but to accept socialism, a so-called "dictatorship of the proletariat", but even in such a system you could have a constitution that enshrines socialism as the the economic system, while still giving people the ability to vote on everything else.

For example "Private Property" could be abolished. Factories and business could be owned by all of the employees as a whole and the profits shared equitably. After a short time living in such a system it would be unlikely that the majority of people would vote to return power back over to just a few individuals.

This would likely depend on the transition going smoothly. Give people a little hardship and the knee jerk/reactionary response would be to proclaim they were "better off" before.

The main problem with Socialism is that people are so used to having 'rulers', that they simply do not know how to act in their absence. This creates a seeming 'power vacuum'. Unscrupulous individuals can use that fact as a way to assume the roles vacated by the formerly rich and powerful in the name of being a force that maintains the "Dictatorship of the Proletariat", when very often they seem to become dictators themselves.

In my personal opinion, violent revolution will always lead to that outcome. If we ever want to evolve as a society, people must first understand what Socialism actually is and why it's the best choice for the majority of people. We must freely choose it, because it's the right thing to do.

That is made extremely difficult because the rich and powerful like being rich and powerful, and will use every bit of their resources to ensure they stay rich and powerful. It's easier to convince cops to side with them to keep them in power by sharing a tiny bit of their wealth, than it is to convince them to do the right thing, when they aren't even sure what the right thing is.

There is a reason that Education is a political battleground in the US. If people were actually taught the truth, they probably would choose to do the right thing. The capitalists won't allow that to happen if they can help it.

Anytime you see someone trying to cut funding for education, or try to have a whitewashed version of history taught. This is the reason.

This is also the source of "Red Scare" propaganda and fear mongering. 'Keep people scared, ignorant, and confused' will probably be the subtitle of the last 100 years if they make a movie about it in the future, provided the Fascists and/or Capitalists don't win.

Edit: JFK once said "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." I think there is a lot of wisdom in that and I wish people in power would take it to heart, though I know they wont.