In a predominantly capitalist system, much of something could get in the way that isn't fair at all. What if you have an illness that's very expensive to treat? Now your growth (or "growth," if you are a skeptic) as a citizen is impeded not only by the afflictions of the disease, but also by the afflictions of poverty and missed access. If it takes money to make money, and your funds are all absorbed away by something you can't control, then losing money means you lose even more money, and with it, chances for success, and with those, your potential to contribute to society.
Surely that isn't optimal. Most of us in my generation, and perhaps a vast majority around the world, agree this is not optimal. Not optimal, you might say, but it's the fairest system we have that works. And you aren't right if you say that. It's already quite apparent that mixed economies, when set up wisely, work as well as or better than purely capitalist economies.
If imperfect capitalism works better than capitalism, then capitalism isn't the best system. If capitalism isn't the best system, it seems likely that imperfect capitalism isn't the best system, either. Where do we go from here?
Capitalism drives cooperation by competition and competition by cooperation. When the same rules apply to everyone—a tenet of free enterprise—then on one level, the system of rules is fair. Yet anyone who has played a board game knows that applying the same rules to everyone doesn't guarantee playability, balance, or even fairness itself. And everyone who has followed a high-profile court case knows that, at least in the United States of 2019, the rules do not apply equally to everyone.
How can we keep (and improve) the cooperative, competitive, resource-managing, and motivating features of capitalism without succumbing to its many catalogued ills? If the server of the state has a bug, what is that bug, and how do we fix it?
