"Sorry, It's Not a 'Law of Capitalism' That You Pay Your Employees as Little as Possible. It's..."

[Moostache]

24. You are not accounting for what made capitalism work in the first place...

In post-war America from 1945 through 1970, wages and work/productivity tracked a roughly even path and the system was tightly regulated through government laws, agencies and enforcement. We also had a progressive tax code that maintained some semblance of fairness without allowing for a de facto aristocracy to accumulate inheritance wealth and pseudo-royalty land and titles.

In the period from 1980 to the present, government regulation and enforcement have been gutted, the tax code has been dumped onto the back of the former middle class and the system of capitalism has broke free of its containment and become a destructive force of wealth accumulation in a rigged game.

Replace it?
Not necessary...

Re-cage the beast by returning power to the people with publicly financed elections, term-limited politicians who are barred from lobbying after their "service" is over (CHOOSE - a career IN government or a career LOBBYING government but NOT both), eliminate the very concept of "externalities" by forcing corporations to account for things like pollution and waste disposal and road / infrastructure maintenance and upkeep. This can either be done directly through taxes or indirectly through fines and citations for the violations of already existing laws or by passing and enforcing new laws.

The "problem" is not so much capitalism itself, but the virulent, wealth concentrating bastardization it has become. You can still incentivize work and effort in an inherently lazy and selfish species like homo sapiens without seizing everything...