As we reported last week, elites in New York City are panicking. The surprise success of Zohran Mamdani, a Democratic Socialist, in the Democratic primary for the city’s mayor is a direct challenge to the system that keeps the rich and powerful—rich and powerful.
Mamdani’s campaign is based on a radical idea (at least to some): what if we used government not just to secure property and markets, but ensure that every human being had the basic necessities of life?
Unsurprisingly, after 40 years of neoliberal-driven decline of the working class, Mamdani’s message was incredibly popular—especially among young people.
But Mamdani’s platform, while a step in that direction, could still go much further.
What if the whole country—or the whole world—moved beyond the system of exploitation that is capitalism? What would that world look like?
In this week’s NOTICE News Deep Dive, we’ll explore that question by imagining a world beyond capitalism:
What it could actually look like
Where it’s already being built
And the biggest lies used to convince us it’s impossible
Because if we want a better future, we have to be brave enough to imagine one.
EDITOR’S NOTE: This article is the third in a four part series about capitalism. In part one, we exposed capitalism's fundamental flaw. In part two, we examined capitalism's most pernicious lie. And next week, we’ll conclude with how we can win a better world beyond capitalism.
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🌎 Meet the world we deserve
For some, talking about a world without capitalism conjures up scary images of Soviet gulags or Chinese “struggle sessions.”
But moving beyond capitalism does not mean ending money, markets, democracy, work, or private wealth.
It means guaranteeing that everybody has the basic necessities of life first—food, housing, healthcare, and education, without fear of ever losing them—and then opening up markets and competition.
WHAT WOULD CHANGE: Imagine everything we have now, but enshrined as rights for all—not just for rich people:
HOUSING wouldn't be a commodity to speculate on. Instead of real estate empires extracting rent from people who just need a place to live, we'd have public housing programs and housing cooperatives.
HEALTHCARE would be what it always should have been: a human right, not a business. Instead of insurance companies denying coverage to boost profits, we'd have universal healthcare that covers everyone, period.
WORK would be democratized. Instead of bosses who've never done your job making decisions about your workplace, workers would have real say over their labor conditions, schedules, and priorities.
EDUCATION would be free, liberatory, and designed to help people flourish rather than churn out compliant workers. Education would be about developing critical thinking, creativity, and the skills we need to build a just society—not just eventually getting a job.
FOOD would be safe and nutritious—not packed with sugar and carbs, slowly killing us all so rich investors can buy another yacht.
THE ENVIRONMENT would be a fundamental concern worthy of protection, not just another resource—like workers—to be exploited.
If you think that all of this sounds like some dreamland utopia—know this: we already do most of these things, in bits and pieces, all around the world.
And since the Green Revolution, there’s really no such thing as food scarcity. We absolutely have the resources to feed every mouth on the planet.
The only thing stopping us from guaranteeing these things is our economic system that prioritizes private profit over human needs: capitalism.
✅ Proof that it works
Despite the widespread belief that running everything like a business is the most efficient way to do things, we’re surrounded by non-capitalist institutions that prove otherwise.
THE GOVERNMENT: Some of the most successful and popular programs in American life are run not for profit—but for people.
Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid aren’t about generating private wealth. They exist to preserve human dignity. As a country, we’ve decided that the elderly, the poor, and the disabled should not go without healthcare or a basic income.
Perhaps the best example is the Veterans Health Administration. It consistently ranks among the most trusted parts of the federal government—and it’s fully socialized healthcare.
Because we venerate veterans (as we should), the VA has been shielded from the cuts and sabotage that have gutted other public programs. It’s proof of what a well-funded, government-run healthcare system can look like in the U.S.
But collective ownership doesn’t have to mean federal control. Many of the public institutions we rely on every day—like public education, libraries, fire departments, museums, and even water and electric utilities—are locally owned and managed.
They’re run without a profit motive, designed to serve the public good—not shareholders—and they work.
SOCIALIZED HOUSING: And if we can manage water and electricity without Wall Street, why not housing? And around the world, there are examples that prove public, socialized housing can be beautiful, functional, and deeply popular.
In Vienna, Austria, roughly 60% of residents live in public or publicly subsidized housing—and it’s not just for the poor. The city builds high-quality, well-designed apartments that middle-class families actively choose over the private market. Rents are regulated, evictions are rare, and housing is treated as a social good, not an investment asset.
In Singapore, over 80% of people live in housing built by the government—most of it owned long-term by the residents themselves. The Housing and Development Board provides clean, safe, high-rise apartments with modern amenities and community infrastructure. It’s one of the most expansive public housing programs in the world—and it works.
WORKER OWNERSHIP: The same principles that make socialized housing successful—democracy, shared ownership, and meeting human needs—can transform the workplace, too.
Worker cooperatives put democracy at the heart of the economy—giving the people who do the work the power to decide how their workplace operates, how profits are shared, and what values guide the business.
And they’re not hypothetical—they already exist.
Cooperative Home Care Associates in the Bronx employs over 2,000 home health aides—mostly women of color—who own and operate their workplace democratically. They provide better care, improved working conditions, and more stable employment than traditional for-profit agencies.
The Evergreen Cooperatives in Cleveland are revitalizing neighborhoods by creating worker-owned businesses that keep wealth in the community instead of extracting it.
Mondragon Corporation in Spain employs more than 80,000 people, proving that worker-owned enterprises can operate successfully at massive scale—from manufacturing to banking to retail—while keeping decision-making democratic and profits shared among the workers who create them.
These examples aren't perfect—they exist within or alongside capitalist systems that constrain what's possible. But they prove that human beings can organize society around cooperation, democracy, and care rather than competition, hierarchy, and profit.
🤔 But what about…
Every time someone imagines a better world, capitalism’s brainwashed defenders roll out the same tired arguments. Let's address them head-on.
"But who would innovate without profit?"
Some of the most transformative innovations of our time came from public research and collaborative efforts, not private profit-seeking.
The internet, GPS, touch screens, and COVID vaccines all came from Government-funded research.
Meanwhile, capitalism's "innovation" gave us planned obsolescence designed to break so you have to buy more, surveillance technology to track your every move, and forty-seven different brands of breakfast cereal while people go hungry. Is that really the innovation we want to protect?
"What about incentives to work hard?"
Capitalism's incentives are fundamentally backwards. Under this system, you make money by keeping people sick (pharmaceutical companies), by keeping people in debt (financial institutions), by destroying the environment (fossil fuel companies), and by keeping people desperate enough to accept poverty wages (pretty much every major corporation).
Real incentives for human flourishing would reward teachers, caregivers, firefighters, and farmers—the people who actually keep society running—not financial speculators who contribute nothing but extract wealth from everyone else's work.
"Don't you want freedom and choice?"
Capitalism offers the "freedom" to sell your labor or starve. That's not choice—that's coercion.
Real freedom isn't choosing between ten brands of soda owned by the same two companies. Real freedom is having your basic needs guaranteed so you can actually choose how to spend your life. It's not having to choose between paying rent or buying medication.
When you're not constantly worried about survival, that's when you're truly free to innovate, create, and contribute to society in meaningful ways.
“Socialism has never worked anywhere it’s been tried.”
This is patently false. Socialism is all around us (see the section above), it’s just that our capitalist overlords don’t want you to know its socialism.
"It's not realistic on a mass scale—people are too selfish"
This is capitalism's biggest lie: that humans are naturally greedy, so we need a system that rewards greed.
But we’re actually hardwired to do the opposite. Humans are social animals that need each other to exist and survive. Unlike most other living things, human babies can’t survive on their own without humans, so we’re born with a deep instinct to care, protect, and love.
Capitalism creates selfishness by forcing people to compete for survival. When helping others might mean you can't pay rent, of course people get defensive.
Here's the real problem: capitalism rewards the worst human behaviors. The people who rise to the top are often those willing to exploit workers and destroy the environment. That's not human nature—that's a system that rewards sociopaths.
A post-capitalist system would reward cooperation, care, and community contribution. When people's basic needs are secure, you see the best of human nature, not the worst.
✊ How we get there
A better world is possible—but it's not inevitable.
Capitalism won't collapse on its own, and the people who benefit from the current system won't give up their power voluntarily.
Change will come from organized people demanding it and building alternatives that prove another way is possible.
NEXT WEEK: We'll finish this series by exploring how we can get from here to there.
How do we build the movement that can challenge capitalism's stranglehold on our economy and our imaginations?
What strategies, tactics, and organizing principles can create the world we've just imagined?
The future is in our hands. It's time to fight for it.
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Thank you for reading! - Andrew & Anthony