You are a weak dill if you respond to "encouragement" to spend money and buy stuff you don’t need. It's not the "system" that is at fault It's you.

The alternative to capitalism is communism (there is no nice word for it), and you are also a dill if you don't know how that has failed in the past.

All spending except for essentials is voluntary.

"Any ideas?" No. People have to take responsibility for their behaviour.

What is the point here, Capitalism is a dirty word, so a re-branding is necessary. As a Progressive Socialist I agree unfettered Capitalism is detrimental to the vast majority of society, there are plenty of examples of that. What is required is a controlled balance between rampant Socialism in the form of Communism and excessive Capitalism. Capitalism has a recognisable good side, entrepreneurship with innovative investment and efficiencies which government controlled Socialism is not particularly good at delivering. From the Socialist side government can involve itself in a range of social services that private enterprise is unwilling or unable to effectively deliver on its own, health, education, transport etc etc. In Australia we have a fair system, but it is still lopsided, and overly controlled by the Capitalists.

There are many reasons for preferring capitalism over any other system. But not for the greed is good model of extreme capitalism that is served by wasteful designed obsolescence.

The only private enterprise, free market business model that survived the Great Depression largely intact, was co-ops, or if you will, cooperative capitalism. And served us and rural Australia very well until the advent of Howard.

Who set to with a will to destroy every example he could, from sugar producers to dairy producers! Lincoln welders was operated as a co-op for many years as a huge success story not liked by the greed is good extreme capitalism and parasitical middlemen, who are ruled out by this model which prefers the direct factory to you, marketing paradigm that literally halves the cost of living and doing business.

To encapsulate, it is cooperative capitalism comrade! Coupled to direct marketing, assisted by the worldwide internet and markets previously unavailable.

The above model if applied to all local manufacture and maximized energy dependent automation would allow Australia to successfully compete on the international stage with not just China, but all comers!

All we need to make this possible going forward is government facilitation and financing, plus the world's cheapest energy MSR thorium/MSR nuclear waste burners!

And resisted to the last man (die in a ditch first) by conservative and parasitic extreme exploitative capitalism alike!
Alan B.

The term capitalism, as coined by Marx, means the private ownership of the means of production.

The problem comes because people are taught that it's a capitalist society and then use the term to refer to state ownership or control.

"Any ideas?"
Private property. But that won't stop the ignorant from confusing the same issue in the same way.

Paul1405
And the balance is what?

I agree with the author, some terms and phrases are so loaded and imprecise that their use in political and policy debate is counterproductive. Capitalism, neo-liberalism, economic rationalism, Stalinism, and many contemporary uses of the words fascism and Nazism probably fall into this category. While historically some of these labels have objective and definable meaning, their use to describe present-day ideas is almost always derogatory and usually inaccurate.

Polemic and rhetorical flourishes have their uses in political theatre, but I’d suggest for serious and constructive debate a political label is useful if it meets two criteria:

• There is a shared understanding about what the phrase means between people who oppose it and people who advocate it.

• The people and organisations to whom the label is applied will happily use it as a self-description.

To illustrate, the phrase “neo-conservative” has a particular meaning in US politics that is recognised and accepted by both its opponents and proponents:

https://voegelinview.com/mugged-by-reality-the-neoconservative-turn/

But the phrase “neo-liberal” means very different things to different people, is almost always used as an insult, and is not used as a self-description by any significant organisation, academic or political organisation.

That still leaves us with plenty of “isms” to play with – Marxism, Trotskyism, libertarianism, feminism, anarchism, transhumanism, communitarianism …..

The situation is depressing, but the article is excellent - thank you Dara!

What name could we call "economic systems based on voluntary exchanges"?

"Chimera" perhaps?!

Because we can either have systems or voluntary exchanges, they are contradictory terms.

Best forget about economics and just stop having the state interfering with voluntary exchanges in any way. Economy may then still occur (or maybe not), yet it will no longer be systematic, it will be natural, so natural that it will no longer even be given a mention or require a name!