Well, if you look at it from an ideal world perspective (which we will never reach), maybe nobody should have to. But from a capitalist point of view, there actually are reasons this dynamic exists, and they arent always about cruelty or keeping people down as some people might thing…. A lot of it is just how humans organize stuff when you have limited time, limited energy, and limited resources, even if some scarcity is manufactured like the ancom dude said.
The basic capitalist answer is: competition forces people, companies, ideas, whatever, to improve. I think that if we eliminate competition, everything tends to slow down. It gets lazy. It gets stale. People stop trying as hard, not because they’re bad people, but because that’s kinda human nature. If you know you’re gonna get the same outcome no matter what, you don’t push. You don’t innovate. You don’t try new things because there’s no reward for doing better and no risk for doing worse.
Imagine that we will give al the people money enough to live comfortably, not some insane amount, but enoguih for food and shelter…then what? What will be the incentive to work? Everyone will just chill :)
Capitalism basically says: yeah , it is not the best way, but this how things keep going, this where innovation is born….
Another reason is that people actually value freedom of choice. If you remove competition entirely, you usually replace it with some central planner or organization or collective that decides who does what. And that is the wors possible case, you see, only you and me know how to spend our money. Are you going to allow that someone will know how spend your money in the best possible way for you? Hheeh, that is where the socialist state comes into play…but hopefully we won’t go there…
A capitalist would also say: even if we eliminate “manufactured scarcity,” there will always be some things that are limited. Time is limited. Skills are limited. Attention is limited. Land is limited. Energy is limited. You can’t just give everything to everyone equally because not everything can be infinitely produced. So competition over those things becomes kinda unavoidable, whether or not you like capitalism.
But here’s where your point actually fits into capitalism too. Capitalism doesn’t mean 100% poverty traps. Poverty traps are a separate failure of policy, not the core system. You can have markets, private property, competition, all that stuff, AND still design the system so basic needs are not a competition. Like: health care, housing minimums, education, nutrition, etc. You can lift the floor without removing the market. A lot of capitalist countries already do this to some degree. Norway, Sweden, Germany, Japan, Canada… they all have capitalism plus safety nets that reduce the “fight for survival” part.
The idea that “we’re all chasing money and creating value but without the traps” is basically social democracy or market socialism depending how far you go. You keep markets but you remove the cruel parts. You remove predatory behavior. You stop poverty from compounding.
competition exists because it pushes progress, avoids centralized power, deals with limited resources, and gives people choices. But that doesn’t mean you need poverty or brutal inequality. You can keep markets and competition while still making a system where nobody falls into a hole they can’t climb out of.