I still struggle to understand what capitalism means in this context. If it is bad/ruins everything, it has to be bad in comparsion to something right?

By definition, capitalism is “The concentration or massing of capital in the hands of a few; also, the power or influence of large or combined capital”. To further expand on that, at least in my terms, it also means the abuse of that power at the expense of the workers. For example, you have large corporations who bust unions because they fear losing some or all of their power against their workers; US federal minimum wage, which already does not keep up with inflation, was last raised in 2009; the expectation of working long hours (salaried workers) without being paid any sort of overtime or other compensation.

What is that (imagined or real) alternative you so adamantly try to attribute as a worthy way of living?

I wouldn’t go so far as to say I’m a socialist (democratic or otherwise), but I do feel that corporations need to be reigned in a bit; especially when it comes to their ability to lobby governments and write laws that favor themselves (again, at the expense of workers). They do need to be taxed more fairly and consistently, held to higher standards with respect to punishment when breaking the law (see below).

Amazon example:

According to Macrotrends, Amazon is worth over $1.6 trillion dollars as of January 2024. They were recently fined $35 million by France for their aggressive surveillance of warehouse workers. That comes out to about 0.0021875% of their net worth. That’s roughly 2 one-hundred-thousandths of their net worth. Where’s the punishment? That’s more like a fee for them to get away with worker abuse.

Edit: Fix error with the decimal place name.