the world could genuinely really use that “better than both” system right now, before capitalism kills the planet and then the planet kills us.
having said that, I am not certain how one would even begin to build a system that assholes can not exploit. Assholes will always exist, and frequently team up to be bigger, more effective assholes to everyone else. Communism fails for this simple reason, humans are corruptible. Capitalism is a “winning” system (until it isn’t) for assholes and few others. How do you even begin to formulate a system that works for everybody (or most everybody), that does not just disincentivize or punish but make it entirely infeasible for bad actors to undermine it or game it? One that doesn’t allow starving children and billionaires to exist at once?
Anarchism is all well and good in a world where there are no other governments, but I doubt we get from here, where we are now, to universal mutual aid open bordered bliss, without a lot of kicking and screaming from the die-hard capitalists (read: very successful assholes) of the world. Or an apocalyptic catastrophe of some sort. So there must be formulated some system that can compete and exist, not just survive but thrive; in a world filled with manipulative bad actors, entire foreign governments comprised of them and those home-grown; while not being susceptible to the same hollowing out of government function/principles or being conquered militarily.
it’s a discussion worth having, certainly, but I doubt it’s one that would bear fruit in our lifetimes. Sure, I know the divine right of kings ended, and hell, I might even be sitting in a front row seat for watching the end of American democracy – who knows what’ll implode next – but hoping for the end of assholes in power, being able to amass incredible power, something seemingly older than the wheel and recorded history? seems like a reach.
You know, it was once in vogue to lobotomize the mentally ill, too. Just because an institution does it, doesn’t make it not barbaric.