"Capitalism does not create greed and other human failings." No, but it treats them as resources to be encouraged and exploited. If we stopped being greeedy and envious and trying to do each other down the system who be rocked to its foundations.

Of course it isn't just capitalism, which is really just a system of creative accountancy. The only three countries which execute more of it scitizens than the USA - Iran, China and Saudi Arabia - aren't exactly conventionally capitalist.

But a society which sets out to try to make people obsessed with thinking they need things they don't have, and that they are individually failures in life if they don't get a march ahead of their neighbours is bound to involve a heavy cost in human suffering. And the main victims are the poor and the powerless, both sides of the law.