“Apple’s at $4 trillion, and Musk’s compensation in his latest plan is geared to a $10 trillion valuation,” Sorrell told the audience. “I have no doubt that Musk or Tesla will get to that valuation. At some point, we’ll have a $10 trillion company. To put that into perspective, other than the United States and China, a $10 trillion company would effectively be the third-biggest [economy in the world]. They’re nation-states. The ability of governments to control them, I think, has become limited.”

https://fortune.com/2025/10/30/martin-sorrell-says-ai-has-already-missed-the-oppenheimer-moment/

The fact that this is even possible tells us all we need to know about whether capitalism, as we currently practice it, is the economic model we should be adhering to.

Engines have been redesigned to make them better. Computers have been redesigned to make them better. Governments have been redesigned to make them better.

The pattern is the same for all technologies, except for one: our economic system.* It lies stagnant. We need to redesign the system. The current model might be better than many previous iterations, but that doesn't make it perfect. It is clearly __very broken__, and we are witnessing the effects as it destroys everything around us -- our government, culture, and personal lives -- with its instability. Even our recent political turmoil can be traced back to this as a major factor.

*(Yes, forms of government are technologies, as are economic systems. Thinking of them that way might feel unfamiliar, but this is exactly the deficiency I am pointing out.)

Our economic system should not even admit the possibility of a billionaire, much less a trillionaire.

We need to closely examine why wealth continues to accrue in the hands of the few who are already wealthy, and evaporate from the savings of the common people. This is blatant, I repeat BLATANT, evidence of rent-seeking behavior.

Rent-seeking is an economics term, for those who aren't familiar:

"Rent seeking is an economic practice where individuals or businesses aim to increase their wealth without contributing to society's overall value, often undermining market efficiency."

EDIT: Here's the source of that quote:
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/r/rentseeking.asp

Now, if you are a shareholder and own some portion of a business, but don't actively contribute to that business's success by working there, and instead get dividends simply for existing as a shareholder, what is actually happening in this picture? You are increasing your wealth without actually contributing to society's overall value. In other words, being a shareholder is by definition rent-seeking behavior.

The standard for-profit corporation operates this way. They are owned by third parties who do not actively contribute. Every one of these companies is actively scraping wealth out of the hands of the workers and customers, with every economic exchange, and putting that wealth into the hands of these invisible shareholders. They are literally wealth-extraction machines.

There are an estimated 33 million businesses in the US alone. Large corporations, which are overwhelmingly following the model I described above, account for approximately 56% of total revenue. That means about half of the money that changes hands in economic exchanges in the US passes through the hands of these wealth extraction machines.

https://www.clearlypayments.com/blog/the-number-of-businesses-in-the-usa-and-statistics-for-2024/

We have literally constructed a system that is designed to concentrate wealth, at scale, by extracting it from workers and consumers.

Now, if anybody who is a die-hard Capitalist indoctrinated into the American Way reads me saying things like this, the inevitable response is something along the lines of, "What alternative do we have? Communism!? That doesn't work!"

I question whether socialism or communism (no they are not the same thing) have truly been given a proper go, but that's beside the point. We have options that are a smaller leap from our current setup: Focused bug fixes that represent small, incremental changes in the right direction that don't threaten the stability of the system. We can do those things with minimal risk, and, from there, figure out how to continue to improve things.

Maybe in the long run we'll end up at a socialist or communist system, or maybe not, but wherever we take it, if we continue to improve our system through continued, gradual change instead of digging in our heals, we will end up with a system that is better than what we have. That's worthwhile, IMO. And not Scary.