I think you’re absolutely right about the evidence strongly supporting capitalism being less than ideal from a utilitarian perspective but also not supporting any putative drop in replacement system (and providing a lot of evidence that revolutions are a terrible idea in most places). As Churchill once said of Parliamentary democracy, it’s the worst system apart from all the others that have been tried.
But I would think for critics of capitalism there are plenty of feasible options short of completely eliminating it. The Nordic model is (for better and for worse) notably less capitalistic than the United States model, for example. Many well established problems with market economies like externalities and lack of public goods (and utilitarian issues like wealth inequality) are feasibly solvable to a much greater extent than under the present system, and seem to fall into the category of “system[s] involving power structures for which there is a lot of attention on the left but almost no attention within EA”
I think there are other reasons why EA doesn’t get involved (there is has a lot of attention as a problem already, achieving change is extremely difficult and costly, and given uncertainty and different starting premises EAs are highly unlikely to agree with each other. though the latter hasn’t stopped them exploring other fields). I’m not sure getting more actively involved in the politics of economic distribution would actually improve EA as a movement, pursue the ‘right’ goals or achieve any success though.
I think you’re absolutely right about the evidence strongly supporting capitalism being less than ideal from a utilitarian perspective but also not supporting any putative drop in replacement system (and providing a lot of evidence that revolutions are a terrible idea in most places). As Churchill once said of Parliamentary democracy, it’s the worst system apart from all the others that have been tried.
But I would think for critics of capitalism there are plenty of feasible options short of completely eliminating it. The Nordic model is (for better and for worse) notably less capitalistic than the United States model, for example. Many well established problems with market economies like externalities and lack of public goods (and utilitarian issues like wealth inequality) are feasibly solvable to a much greater extent than under the present system, and seem to fall into the category of “system[s] involving power structures for which there is a lot of attention on the left but almost no attention within EA”
I think there are other reasons why EA doesn’t get involved (there is has a lot of attention as a problem already, achieving change is extremely difficult and costly, and given uncertainty and different starting premises EAs are highly unlikely to agree with each other. though the latter hasn’t stopped them exploring other fields). I’m not sure getting more actively involved in the politics of economic distribution would actually improve EA as a movement, pursue the ‘right’ goals or achieve any success though.