I don’t see how that’s obvious. Can you give me the rationale for this other system?

The rationale for capitalism is, essentially, the information problem. Basically, no one person has enough information to decide where a society’s resources should be distributed. An analogy I’ve heard is: how should society decide whether they should build a bridge or a tunnel (one takes more wood, the other takes more steel)? The answer is extremely complicated, depending on society’s capacity for producing wood and steel, people’s desire for either a bridge or tunnel, and future expectations of the need for wood or steel. The answer is given by prices, which encode this information and incentivize making the right choice.

If wood is cheaper, it means there’s more wood available and no one expects a huge need of wood to pop up soon. The same for steel, labor, land, and all the other resources that go into building a tunnel or bridge. Society is incentivized to build it for the lowest cost, which also happens to be the most efficient way to do it.

Is there a system which can do better? Would love to hear about it.

And also, I’m very scared when people suggest “down with capitalism!” because it’s a pretty decent system and I worry about tearing society down unless we have very good reasons to believe it’ll be better for it.