For a couple of times in my life, I have bought into the idea that capitalism was a good thing. I thought so until I realized the nature of money.

Money (in a society with laws that protect free market capitalism) is ultimately an object that subjugates and destroys intrinsic human desire. Think about it. In order to get money, you have to get it from someone else. The only way someone else will give you money is if you do something that someone else wants you to do. Your desires only matter in a capitalist society if your desires largely agree with the people around you. If they do not agree with the majority, then you are forced to forego your desires in favor of mean survival. The outlook is rather bleak.

But it's not just that your desires must be subjugated to those around you. It is that your desires must agree with "the average human" -- which, while it might exist as a statistical fact, does not exist in reality. There is no average human. So, each of us is made to conform to a standard of desire that does not actually exist in the real world for anyone. Capitalism is therefore innately inhuman and inhumane, because it subjugates humans to a system that does not allow humans to be truly fulfilled.

That said, I also don't advocate for socialism. Just like capitalism, socialism is another means of subjugating humanity to collective desire -- the average human again.

By looking at capitalism and socialism though the lens of human desire, we can see that, although they might seem opposed, they are really two sides of the same coin. It's no wonder then that capitalist America and communist China trade so readily. They are really one and the same, both forms of slavery to the inhuman.

What to replace them with, then? I don't know. I often favor nothing, myself. Ideology that can be spoken is, in my experience, not worth having. There is always a problem with ideology, no matter what it is. Humans matter more than ideas.