From where I sit, "capitalism" has nothing to do with it! Capitalism is not corporatism, and capitalism is not materialism. Capitalism is the freedom to consensually buy, sell, and exchange goods and services without government interference. How that freedom is used under a truly capitalist economic system is a matter of individual choice. If you wanted to make a ton of money and spend it all on buying land and filling it with tiny apartments given freely to the homeless while living like Mother Teresa yourself under a vow of poverty, real capitalism would allow you to do that. If you wanted to buy a big mansion and spend all your money partying like a rock star, it would allow you to do that too. And if you ran out of cash and ended up penniless in the streets, you'd have to rely on charity, not "entitlements" provided by State robbery. But with the end of forced confiscation, there would be more charity to go around, and a lot more goodwill to give it and gratitude to receive it.
Sadly, the society we live in is a long, long way from any such respect for individual choice and personal responsibility. I'd say the U.S. is in a middle stage of statism, where coercive wealth redistribution is seen as "good", yet actually improving the circumstances of poor people via such redistributions is seen as secondary (if that) to maintaining the power and financial status of those in government and their hangers-on.
In some ways the current system is best described as fascist – private property, trade, and economic choice are allowed to legally exist, but only within limits that allow their productivity to be harnessed and leeched off for the benefit of the ruling caste.
I say fuck all tyranny. Smash the State. End aggression, live and let live.
Love & Liberty,
((( starchild )))
“The people starve because those above them eat too much tax-grain. That is the only reason why they starve. The people are difficult to keep in order because those above them interfere. That is the only reason why they are so difficult to keep in order.”
— Lao Tzu (~300-600 B.C.E.)
“Without laws or compulsion, men would dwell in harmony.”
— Lao Tzu in the Tao-Te Ching, quoted in Arthur Waley's "The Way and Its Power: A Study of the Tao Te Ching and Its Place in Chinese Thought" (Grove, 1958)