This thread is retarded. I can't tell if this is asking for a better economic model or a better model for governance. Either way, limiting to three options is simply lazy, and none of the vote represents my truest opinion of which is the best because what I want isn't available. I will take the time to entertain the topic starter and anyone else who reads. For the record, I love America despite the sad position we're in. Alright chums, let's do this:
Capitalism is built upon creative destruction. You take money (M) and use it to be labor power (LP) and means of production (MP) to make a commodity (C). You then use C to more M (M'). So the whole model of capitalism basically sums up to M-C-M' as opposed to C-M-C or C-C. This creates commodities in large numbers and is efficient in the sense that goods are created by specialized and cheap labor. What this also does is that it is naturally inclined to create inequality barring government involvement. And this has been working for around 200 years. Theoretically, this would be an endless process, however, MP is finite, and right now, we're using the last of it: The Earth itself. Capitalism is also violent. Where competition for resources is encouraged, war for land is irresistible. Also, given the growing working class, the proletariats are naturally exploited because the workers are forced to compete against each other. The invisible hand left unchecked creates ignorance, and Ricardo's assumption that comparative advantage is good for the economy because a citizen of the state would be loyal to his own state is wrong. Whatever the case, free trade doesn't work because not only of Ricardo's failed assumption that companies in the US would help the US, but also because Karl Marx's assumption that the government is a committee of capitalists may be true as well. Adam Smith himself criticizes the famous pin factory in the end of Wealth of Nations.
Adam Smith envisioned a natural path to development and an unnatural path to development. The latter being what Marx calls Capitalism. The former is what can be called "Market-based" economic system. This is what Adam Smith saw in Imperial China. An economic system where the workers and the land are not exploited. A system that somewhat resembles capitalism but the power ultimately lies in the government. Smith looked at East Asia and saw it to be much greater than Britain at the time. In fact, back 1820, China and Japan combined constituted as over 35% of the world's GDP. US and Britain put together is less than 10%. Consequently since interstate war was uncommon, peace was more common than war, where the opposite was true of Europe. Currently, the PRC is doing something like this, where they have capitalists competing with other capitalists and control the economy. Also, socialism like present-day Europe and the US have some resemblance to this system, though they ultimately are capitalist.
Communism is a system that has never actually occurred in the way the thread poster has described it. In fact, there has always been a central governing authority, so unless proven otherwise, total equality does not exist as an economic model for governing a state.
Whatever happened to political economy? Separation of economics from governance (political science) would have made the great thinkers cry.
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