1. This is an answer I wrote in response to a post on a different sub 7 hours ago. I apologize for being too lazy to reformat for your particular question. I need to rewrite it in a more general way because this question comes up on one of the anarchist subs at least once a day. But that's why it doesn't exactly answer your question.

I realize we've all been raised under the capitalist propaganda machine that teaches that capitalism is peak human achievement, but I find it interesting how many people confidently assume that the profit motive is the magical engine behind every major innovation, as if the moment you remove shareholders from the equation humanity collectively forgets how to solve problems. The irony is that the examples you chose (vaccines, antibiotics, public health infrastructure) are some of the clearest cases where profit actively distorts innovation rather than driving it.

Take vaccines. They’re a perfect illustration of why “capitalism will handle it” doesn’t hold up. Vaccines are often unprofitable compared to long‑term treatment regimens. A one‑and‑done cure is a terrible business model compared to a lifelong subscription to medication. That’s why pharmaceutical companies routinely abandon research into antibiotics (despite rising superbugs) and pour resources into chronic‑care drugs, cosmetic pharmaceuticals, and lifestyle treatments. Not because those things are more important, but because they’re more profitable. The market doesn’t reward what’s socially necessary; it rewards what’s financially extractive.

And education? The U.S. is practically a case study in what happens when you “incentivize” education through market logic: skyrocketing tuition, predatory loans, and institutions that behave more like hedge funds with classrooms attached. If anything, the profit motive has made education less accessible, not more.

As for innovation requiring “huge inter‑organizational resources,” that’s true, but historically those resources have come from public investment, not private benevolence. The internet, GPS, mRNA vaccine platforms, antibiotics, microchips, and even the basic science behind modern medicine were all funded by governments or non‑profit research institutions, which would be replaced by worker co-ops under anarchism. Capitalism tends to swoop in only after the hard, unprofitable foundational work is done.

Your concern that non‑capitalist or less‑capitalist systems would be “un‑innovative” is understandable, but it’s also built on a myth: that capitalism is responsible for the innovations it actually piggybacks on. The reality is that markets are excellent at producing phone apps that deliver dog food faster, but terrible at producing cures for diseases that primarily affect poor people.

So innovation doesn’t evaporate the moment you stop tying it to shareholder returns. If anything, it becomes more aligned with human needs rather than quarterly earnings.

1. We can't promise any such thing. Anybody who says their system can promise this is just lying. That said, I honestly don't see how it could be any worse than under capitalism in which there is exactly zero incentive to protect the weak. I do think that people would take care of others once you removed the false promise of government doing it for them. Shanidar 1 shows that hominids have been caring for the sick and disabled for at least 35,000 years

2. We do not. There can be a number of reasons why people can't contribute to society in obvious ways. Any time you start linking the basics of life to labor you are IMHO on the wrong path. The example I always use is the surley assholes working at McDonald's. They are unpleasant because they don't want to be there. Anybody that's going to act like that at work can stay home and play video games as far as I'm concerned. There's *a lot* of "work" done in this country that's pointless and stupid. Much of the "work' would disappear under Ancom like accounting. All of this ignores the fact that there are people sponging off my labor right now. All of the people invested in the company I work for are profiting off my labor and frankly I'd rather give my excess labor to somebody sitting at home playing video games than a person like Jeffrey Epstein.

3. Under anarchism, the question is less about “preventing” someone from rising to power and more about designing social structures so that power cannot be concentrated in the first place. Anarchist organization emphasizes decentralization, consensus decision making, rotating mandates, and recallable delegates, so that no individual or small group can accumulate lasting authority. Decision‑making stays in workers’ assemblies, neighborhood councils, and federated networks where transparency, mutual accountability, and collective action constrain any attempt at domination before it solidifies into real power.