In contrast to a monarchy, where people cannot choose their leader, in capitalism people can choose from which company they buy, or even create their own.

As another person already pointed out, these are obviously two different categories.

The question then is, why do people choose the way they do, both when buying and when running a company? To me it seems, they don’t because of some external pressure (like monarchy requires).

The point can be summed up as a question: Why don’t people run (more) non-capitalist services and productions, and why don’t they prefer them when looking to satisfy their demand?

These non-capitalist things exist, it’s certainly possible. But as far as I know, they are all very niche. Like a communal kitchen, some solidary agriculture or housing project. Heck, entire villages of this kind exist.

So the alternative is there, but it requires actual commitment and work. I don’t see how capitalism could be abolished in an armed uprising (in contrast to monarchy). But it can be replaced by alternative projects. Partially. Why are they so small and few?

That’s a self fulfilling prophecy, isn’t it? The effect you describe would not be there if it wasn’t for comments like this. Or at the very least, these comments make the effect bigger.

Because religion evolved to thrive in us.

It’s like a parasite, and our mind is the host. It competes with other mind-parasites like other religions, or even scientific ideas. They compete for explanatory niches, for feeling relevant and important, and maybe most of all for attention.

Religions evolved traits which support their survival. Because all the other variants which didn’t have these beneficial traits went extinct.

Like religions who have the idea of being super-important, and that it’s necessary to spread your belief to others, are ‘somehow’ more spread out than religions who don’t convey that need.

This thread is a nice collection of traits and techniques which religions have collected to support their survival.

This perspective is based on what Dawkins called memetics. It’s funny that this idea is reciprocally just another mind-parasite, which attempted to replicate in this comment.

There are many such ways to memorize conversion ratios. Admittedly, this one is particularly cool, since you can construct it from the fairly trivial fibonacci series. But I still feel, it’s no replacement for the actual solution; get rid of imperial and adopt metric.

What does that mean? I’m not sure if I correctly interpret that as somewhat dismissive, as if a good train system was a given or not. It’s the result of political will and investment.

in 2017, Germany invested €69 per citizen in its railways, ahead of France’s €38 and Spain’s €32. It’s still far behind other countries, however, with Switzerland and Austria investing €362 and €187 per citizen respectively.

A bit like when you get Zerg rushed in Starcraft and say “Well sure but that’s because they built so many units early on”. It’s a decision, and becoming good in that metric was precisely the intent. Also not to do so is a decision. Unlike in Starcraft, the decision to neglect your public transport is not a similarly viable strategy.