Capitalism is the best system to produce the best results

Living standards have been increasing since the birth of the human race. The argument that this is due to capitalism is a typically dishonest attempt by capitalists to create a false correlation between technological evolution (which can, by its very nature, only progress forward) and their unrelated financial pyramid system called capitalism. The amelioration of living standards predates capitalism and therefore the amelioration of living standards is not caused by capitalism. Francis Fukuyama, a political scientist and staunch advocate of capitalism, proved in 1992 that dictatorships often have a more positive effect on the economy than capitalist societies. Since history is fairly clear that dictatorships are not usually a good idea, and since capitalism is an economic system, we can conclude that the most fundamental requirements of a healthy society are not found in its economy, otherwise everybody would be living in a dictatorship with high economic growth. This point becomes even more pertinent if we extend the argument further, and claim that all capitalist democracies are in reality capitalist dictatorships, proven by the fact that there is not, never has been, nor ever will be a democratic vote about the continuation of capitalism. Social psychologist Erich Fromm wrote a book called The Sane Society over fifty years ago, in which he successfully proved that the psychological effects of indoctrination into capitalism were the same as that of a religion. If the values and practices of a particular ideology oppose the conditions of man"s natural state of being, then from an objective standpoint they institutionalise neuroticism. Adherence to them can therefore, as a matter of consequence, only conventionalise neuroticism within the individual. Since psychologists themselves would then be operating under an erroneous characterisation of normalcy (based on capitalist ideology rather than reality) their cornucopian encyclopaedia of known social dysfunction would predominantly then document the manifestation of normal (or at least reactionary) behaviour within an abnormal culture. To simplify the point with an analogy: at Sunday school, the problem child isn't the one who believes in the flying spaghetti monster and who makes his/her decisions based on that belief, because that's the dominant ideology of the group. The problem kid is the one who questions the logic of the group, and the more he/she does it, the more the others will find ways to revalidate their ideology to themselves (i.e. "He's just stupid"; "He's lost his faith"; He's a bad apple; He was sent here to test the rest of us" etc...). You talk about innovation, but again this is another religious (and false) argument. Yes, better products can be produced over the short-term by introducing the concept of market competition, but over the long-term the same concept erodes the same competition it claims to promote, since capitalism has no reset button. McDonalds keeps getting richer, not poorer, and clearly it is ludicrous to suggest one can ever now enter into "competition" with McDonalds, since it has at its command the accumulative capital of half a century's worth of profit within a system in which capital is liquid power. The only logical result of capitalism is oligopoly and then finally monopoly, since the only effect of competition is to fraction down the competitors -- eventually to the point where there is only one left. The final result of capitalism therefore, is economic dictatorship. You also mention exchanging labour for money, which is an interesting point to examine. Here in the UK, welfare claimants are now being forced to work for free for large companies or lose their benefit, and many of these were people who lost their jobs when the same large companies downsized during the recession. It's just another deception of capitalism that work is promoted and advertised as an incentive. Work is mandatory for the able in all capitalist societies, with the exception of the rich and powerful. Therefore, the basis of capitalism is economic slavery which has been called an "incentive" only to make the ideology more palatable to people. You are put to work in capitalist societies, and its as simple as that. But who are you put to work for? Well, that one's easy, isn't it? The capitalist banking system is another inevitable result of the logical fallacies which fuel the ideology. Since capital is the deity within this particular religion, the more capital one has, the more power one has over other people. But again, the people are told a different story; they are told that capitalism is a strict labour + manufacture = capital formula. But that is clearly false given that a bank's main source of income is capital investment (i.e. capital + risk = capital). Since banks bypass entirely the labour and manufacturing costs of business, and instead profit grotesquely from cheating the system, they devalue the cost of labour and the value of the currency. Despite this clear and irrefutable fact, capitalist society continues to be dominated by banks -- which are effectively parasitic organisms that charge society interest on every penny/cent in circulation -- for the simple reason that banks are already top of the capitalist food chain. Capitalist society can never pay the banks back for the physical currency, since with interest applied there will always be less money in circulation than the total due to the banks. Thus, the fundamental ideology of capitalism is that society works forever to pay back a debt it is mathematically impossible to repay, to a series of institutions which are forever devaluing its currency and undermining its labour. Make no mistake: capitalism is a religion just like Christianity is a religion. It's a belief system with a mountain of evidence discrediting it, which people believe anyway simply because it is all they have ever known.