What we really want is a happiness maximizer but no one knows how to make one of those which leverages the innate characteristics of people.  Capitalism seems like a pretty good system to pragmatically approximate this happiness maximizer.<p>Yes, there are negative externalities to capitalism including possibly maximizing short term happiness at the expense of long term.  Is there something better?<p>Framing this in terms of the paperclip maximizer made this idea appear more interesting than it turned out to be.