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@badger
A good economic system must do two things, create AND distribute wealth. Communism failed the first. Central planning was too cumbersome and not transparent. Capitalism is failing the second and fast. How this isn't beyond obvious I don't know. Drastic correction is needed.
Capitalism does no such thing. It's people who create wealth, and capitalism only provides stable rules and then lets people do their thing. The distinction is an important one, because it allows for a phenomenon called inertia.
Inertia happens when people aren't motivated or well organized enough to behave in the most economically rational fashion. High rent should literally solve the problem of high rent, because people looking to get in on the action build new houses to rent out, which would increase the housing supply. You might counter, "not everyone has the cash just lying around to build apartments", to which I would counter: why don't a large number of people pool their resources to get this built and each shareholder gets a chunk of the rent profits going forward in a way that's proportionate to their contribution? This is rational, but also not a lot of it happening.
Why don't old people respond to shrinking social security checks by moving in together and splitting the cost of rent? Why don't they come together and open their own communally run nursing homes (and hire their own staff) instead of moving into overpriced facilities? If doctors make so much money (and currently get generous scholarships from the state), why aren't more Americans going to medical school, thus alleviating healthcare personnel shortages? Why don't poor people use their surplus time and learning what they need to learn to get better jobs (there's a lot of free resources out there to get them started, and in any case even most poor people do have some disposable income)?
The answer is that too few people are motivated to do this stuff. Do you how billionaires made their billions? By organizing the masses in a highly efficient way. Billionaires wouldn't exist if people got off their asses and organized themselves into workers' cooperatives, which are perfectly legal under capitalism provided that nobody's forced at gunpoint to join one. Do workers' cooperatives suffer from issues that more hierarchical businesses don't? Hire a lawyer and draft the best corporate bylaws you can. But nobody wants to do this. Instead, they subordinate themselves to a leader who manages the whole affair and takes home the lion's share of the earnings.
Does regulation solve this stuff? No, you just make people even less motivated to do stuff because there's more hurdles to jump through for the most basic shit. Would a centrally planned economy? No, because the motivated few would be running everything just like they are now.
There is no answer but to cultivate a more motivated and better organized citizenry. This entails building a new national culture from the ground up.