> It's extremely optimistic to think that 'knobs' for the current system 1) exist, 2) are controllable, and 3) knowable. This is such an abstract oversimplification of empirical reality. The sentiment that capitalism is an engine that can be controlled is less of a metaphor that tracks reality, but more of a rhetorical argument to advocate for some form of liberal technocracy as the solution. I am not going to claim that it isn't (I don't know), but generalizing the complicated collisions of both human economy and culture to fit our scientific paradigm's love of mechanistic explanations is the same mistake that command-economy communists, free-market-equilibrium capitalists, and econometricizing technocrats have made.

It's not extremely optimistic -- it's a statement of fact. We have history and alternate societies which grew in different ways to compare and contrast.

The idea that the system is uncontrollable/unknowable is overly pessimistic. We can take action and change how society is structured -- we know this because we've done it, and we continue to do it. We may not know the knock-on effects, we may not know the eventualities, but we can indeed change society.

In fact, it's surprisingly easy to change how 300MM autonomous people live their daily lives -- there's a system in place. Systems have knobs and systems are controllable at the very least to first-order effects, and we have knowledge because we built the system and it's inspectable to us.

> Our ideas of 'greed' and 'ambition' are at least partially socially constructed, and the idea of 'societal advancement' is a value laden can of worms. Thinking of our current system as controllable diminishes the scale of our analysis. But the correct scale of analysis is one in which greed and ambition, as you say, remain relevant. Much to the chagrin of some economists, greed and ambition cannot be quantified into neat formulae, especially given that we cannot even find agreement on what they mean or the precise point in which they diverge.

I agree -- unfortunately there are so only so many words that can convey the sentiment. It need not be quantified into a formula to be controlled.

If you agree that it is possible to control it at all, then it's a matter of degree.

The argument is not that the system is perfectly controllable and no further analysis is needed. What I was posing is that wider involvement at more powerful rungs of society is needed, precisely because the current discourse is somewhat stale.

> That means the task is much bigger than just thinking of capitalism as an engine. Instead, we must analyze our predicament in not only mechanistic terms, but also accounting for the vagrancies of the human condition and our culture, which creates the types of people that are greedy, ambitious, and talk about 'societal advancement' as an ontological reality that's descended from the heavens in the first place. I think by the time we get to that level of philosophizing (which is absolutely necessary in understanding inequality, suffering, and well-being), we need to drop atomistic conceptions of capitalism in favour of something much more holistic, human, and fuzzy. This amount of prudence is morally obligatory. Social engineering is not a game for white-collar bureaucrats to simply play around with. These are people's lives.

Sure, that sounds good -- the model of capitalism as an engine is not a complete solution to all that ails society.