What the rulebook encourages, but the human heart does not understand or want, is the long term view. But of the two animals pulling the sled, only democracy encourages us to take this view. It is a relentlessly cheerful discipline, telling us that if we all navigate the ship together, we will make some headway against the wind, and our children will make still more headway, and their children more still. It is a small difference, but profound, and symbolizes the optimism of democracy about incremental progress. Capitalism takes the opposite tack.
Capitalism is inherently pessimistic or nihilistic.
Democracy denies the Hobbesian war of all against all, and capitalism, pretending to prophecy it, creates it and enshrines it at the center of our pantheon, as the true, the human, the only way to live. The idea is as savage as the word. Imagine how we respond to the the tragedy of the commons under the rulebooks of democracy and capitalism. We are, you and I and some others, the residents of a village which adjoins a commons where we all graze our sheep. Our discussion, abruptly, is about how to maximize shareholder value, by extracting every last possible dollar from the commons this fiscal period.