The idea of meritocracy is such a bullshit lie it’s laughable. We need it so our children don’t live in a world without hope but much like santa claus they should shed the idea around the time of college. There are merit based reward systems. Ladder climbing is real. Only, many of them are corrupted by politics and mismanagement. Even if you succeed in an isolated merit based system it’s only to incentivize more production and you will never reach the level of CEO or what ever.

What we should teach young adults is that life is a lottery inside a lottery inside a lottery. Success is about increasing your odds by taking as many smart bets as you can. Bets where the reward is great and where you don’t have much at stake if you lose. Betting with other people’s money is the most efficient way of extracting value. The meritocracy isn’t real, so neither is the morals around it. If you want nothing but an easy life this is how you do it. If your can’t in good conscious gamble with other people’s livelihoods we will see you on the ladder.

The PRC is absolutely a viable alternative, it’s a Socialist Market Economy that has been steadily transfering Private Property into Public Property as markets coalesce into monopolist syndicates, which are then capable of central planning.

I think the real issue is that no viable alternative is presented to most people.

As Marx said, “the ideas of ruling class are the ruling ideas”

The alternatives presented are Russian-style authoritarian oligarchy, Islamofascism, or a Venezuela-style “socialism” in which the narrative only focuses on poverty.

Funnily enough you are proof of your previous statement above. The ruling class is presenting any, both better or worse alternatives to you in such form that you immediately dismiss them.

This is the answer, right here

my retirement is non-existent

This is facts. But tankies will downvote

Lack of good examples of countries that are successful without being capitalist?

There are many. The USSR, PRC, Cuba, Vietnam, Laos, etc. Have all drastically improved on previous conditions, achieving large increases in life expectancy, democratization, literacy rates, access to healthcare, housing, education, and more. Read Blackshirts and Reds.

Pretty ubiquitously non-capitalist countries have a pretty poor track record.

This is false. What are you specifically tracking? Freedom for the bourgeoisie?

I often hear the phrase, capitalism is terrible, but it’s the least bad of the terrible options.

The phrase is typically used to describe democracy, not Capitalism.

As an aside, I’m arguing here for capitalism, not billionaires. Supporting capitalism isn’t an endorsement of a complete lack of controls and safeguards.

It doesn’t matter what you support, the Superstructure, ie laws and safeguards, comes primarily from the Base, ie the Mode of Production.

Markets move themselves regardless of people’s will towards centralized syndicates, monopolies over production. These make themselves ripe for siezure and central planning, markets themselves prepare the proletariat for running a socialized economy as they coalesce over time. This is why Marx says the bourgeoisie produces “above all else, its own gravediggers.” There is no maintaining Capitalism, it eliminates itself over time.

For every person who is “super rich”, thousands, if not millions, will go through strife and unfair hardship

Well you are not going to be super rich, and even if you were, there probably would be tons of people who have to live in hell 24/7 in order for you to be super rich.

It’s the American dream. What is the quote? We’re all embarrassed potential millionaires?

This has been studied, and the ‘temporarily embarrassed millionaires’ idea is actually wrong.

The real reason is because some people (especially conservatives, because it’s a core part of conservative ideology) believe that in order for society to work, a hierarchy must be maintained wherein the ‘deserving’ are at the top, and everyone else is in their rightful place. Any threat to the natural hierarchy will undo the societal order and bring chaos and carnage.

This is why Obama becoming president was such an affront – because his presence outside his ‘rightful place’ was an existential threat to the natural order.

This belief has its roots way back when feudalism began to fail and the moneyed classes needed to find a new way to retain their power – both capitalism and conservatism were born at that time, with ideologies shifting from birthright to ‘earned’ status, which enshrined the haves and have-nots into literally sacred structures of meritocracy and social darwinism, and colonialists specifically fostered strict adherence to the social order. It became ingrained culturally that adhering to your station, whatever it is, is crucial for society to function. That there’s honour in being a cog in the machine, and that not accepting your lot in life is a danger to everyone. (eta: this is mostly subconscious, but you can see it if you ask ‘why’ enough times of someone who idolises Musk, for example. You’ll eventually whittle them down to these themes.)

That’s a nutshell view of a complicated topic, but these people don’t believe they’ll strike gold one day. They believe people who are rich deserve to be treated as kings, for the same reason monarchist peasants did.

Socialism is the successful successor to Capitalism. Socialism isn’t an idea you implement, but a consequence of markets coalescing into monopolist syndicates that make themselves ripe for public ownership and planning.

People will find ways to accrue wealth and power even if you change the rules of the game. Sometimes people on this platform make it sound like socialism or communism can solve our problems. but it’s not that simple.