A visitor from outer space without preconceived ideas might see it differently. Maybe it’s all these rich folks, enslaved by their wealth who are the working drones, giving up the best of life in order to feed their obsessions, much to the benefit of the rest of us.

By investing in State Capitalism we might be able to rescue some of those unfortunate rich sots.

They tried Engels ideas, and it didn't work out too well.

In capitalism, businesses are beholden more to owners / shareholders to provide return on investment, than to provide good value to customers, to provide fair wages and benefits to employees, or to provide stable, loyal relationships and fair compensation to vendors.

Unbridled capitalism doesn't incentivize businesses to treat employees well or fairly or even competitively except in very indirect ways (excessive exploitation eventually effects profits, though in ways that are largely not obvious and direct; similarly, poor product quality eventually hurts sales, though in ways that are too far in the future to be of concern to someone managing for the next quarterly report; treating vendors as fungible commodities eventually disrupts supply chains and ruins flexibility, though in ways that are hard, again, to tie to profits).

I just came back from my main client's annual business meeting and was reminded again of how hard it is for them to get their customers to act in (or even see) their rational self-interest beyond the very short term. For example, if you're dealing with a client contact that is running their business into a brick wall that is, nevertheless, several years beyond their pending retirement, they would rather stick with the comfortable and familiar because most people have no shame about handing over their own total fiduciary misconduct to their successor. All they care about is retirement. Or, as I suggested above, people manage for the next quarterly report, which means they get a promotion, and their successor gets the blame for the eventual cratering of the business.

Democratic socialism is an effort to not just incentivize, but to institutionalize, certain values, behaviors and checks and balances that result in employees, customers and vendors thriving and wealth and power not being concentrated too much in any one place or relationship. It is essentially a counter to human greed.

There is another form of this problem just in the vendor / customer relationship. The customer tends to want the most features at the least cost, the vendor tends to want to sell at the highest possible price in exchange for the least work and expense. If that relationship is out of balance, one or the other is going to suffer. Usually, the customer, because they are in the inherently weaker position of having an unmet need, often a perceived need that is not even real, which allows vendors to dictate terms.

That is why we need ethical rules / laws that protect consumers, clarify responsibilities, etc.

Business tends to regard regulation as bad because it's a seemingly endless source of myriad strictures and rules, some of which are ineffective or dated. And there's some validity to that point, but the current conservative notion that zero regulation is the goal, is way overreaching whatever point there actually is.

I prefer structural, institutional practices that don't try to control specific behaviors only, but hold business accountable for certain metrics: equal pay and participation for male and female employees, for example should eventually get to a place similar to Iceland, where 50% of all corporate board members are now simply required to be women as an expression of said gender equality. If business is not nudged in such directions and made to think about and "price in" such consideration, experience demonstrates that it's just not going to happen. You get what you measure for, and with the urgency that you impose.

I find the statement lacking something I cannot place my finger on.Those who are responsible for innovation ,design and invention are due compensation for these. The rub comes when fair pay is not provided the workers for their efforts.

Instinctively, I want to say there's something wrong with this statement as a whole.

Merchants sell things. In order to buy things, somewhere along the way, somebody got paid for their labor. We can argue about whether that compensation was fair or not (and I frequently argue that it needs to be higher in our present age), but it was paid.

Manufacturers make things and sell things; same principle. Landowners don't just produce money from thin air, they employ people and pay them.

For all the considerable financial finagling that goes on (and it is considerable), we've found no better system than capitalism. What we need is a system of government, like those in the Scandinavian nations, that limits the excesses of the system and provides a safety net to protect people from the worst consequences of failure. Not a socialist government, but democratic socialism.