Thanks for responding @its-kino ! I really appreciate it :-)
most of the innovations we have today are a direct result of capitalism.
So, I hear this all the time and it never seizes to amaze me. I'll give another explanation of what drives innovation, and maybe it'll blow your mind: free time. Yes, that's right: free time drives innovation. Give people the time and freedom to pursue their true interests (not money), and they'll come up with the best ideas, innovations and products. Capitalism drives innovation only in so far as it grows profits, which means that there's no money for real research and development. There's a lot of innovation in marketing, not so much in real technology. Electric cars have been around since the 1890s. That's just one example, but the real innovation is done with people with a lot of time on their hands and who do not have to worry about cost-caps or profit-margins.
Furthermore, corporations are risk-averse. They don't take risks. Here's a quote from an article you may want to read:
Investments pushing the frontiers of scientific knowledge are just too risky. The advances sought may not be forthcoming. Those that do occur may not ever be commercially viable. Any potentially profitable results that do arise may take decades to make any money. And when they finally do, there are no guarantees initial investors will appropriate most of the resulting windfall.
source: Tribune
The cost of innovation is socialized, paid for with tax dollars, and mostly done in universities and the army. An Iphone is chuck-full of technologies invented in universities and the army, right up to that magnificent touch-screen. Really, you've got it all wrong, as do most people unfortunately. Most people do really believe in that story about the best baker out-competing lesser bakers. The only problem is that the best baker is just the one who innovates for cost-efficiency and marketing, not necessarily the one that bakes the best bread.
And it's even worse than that: we make worse products on purpose; that's called "planned obsolescense". It's better to sell the same product twice instead of just once. Ever heard about the centennial Light or the Light Bulb Conspiracy?
The problem with socialism (at least the way I see it) is in getting the start up funds to create innovative technologies.
I hope the above has taken away some of those reservations; innovation comes from outside of the economy. Economy is just a set of agreements about how we transform nature into the products we need, there's no big mystery there, despite what economists want you to believe about that.
What's important is for the people to take the reins and stop corporations from massing untold power.
Yes, and democracy is the way to do it. But there has to be both political and economical democracy, or it'll never work.
This is definitely a fair argument. I can't say you have completely convinced me, but you have given me a lot to think about. Thanks a lot.