About defending capitalism (and not billionaires - who more often than not abuse this system). Some of us lived in other systems. And we understand any other system is way way way way worse.

There are however a lot of problems with capitalism and should be held on a very short leash. Or else monopoly happens. The most effective actions to keep capitalism at bay: strong anti-trust laws, strong worker protection (this includes a lot of stuff), wealth tax.

And be aware there are many flavours of calitalism. Most commonly people in USA are the most extreme where you have really "long leash". And people see such capitalism as failing and want to replace whole system.

For the same reason people idolize the King.

I think the "temporarily embarrassed millionaire" idea is overstated, most people I interact with have a somewhat negative outlook on the economy and their future wealth.

I think the real issue is that no viable alternative is presented to most people.

The alternatives presented are Russian-style authoritarian oligarchy, Islamofascism, or a Venezuela-style "socialism" in which the narrative only focuses on poverty.

They feel they will make that money someday.

They sold a lottery ticket to the population and made it look like 99% of you can win when the odds are rigged like a gambling machine. Everybody would defend a gambling machine as “fair and balanced” with enough indoctrination. “The American Dream” was when everybody could afford everything on minimum wage but capitalism is a short term oriented goal where for profit is the only actual mission. Tell me how many people can be sacrificed for it and I would say everybody as climate change has proven and a trillion dollar industry has shown. These climate change activists are stupid enough to think they can take down big corporations with wallets older than some of them. Never in a million years as long as capitalism exists. Imagine 112 years of sitting on their asses and not until 10-20 years ago they decided to use tweezers to put some pressure on them. Now that the whole world is about to be changed completely and irreversibly they want to stop it. It’s basically a cancerous economy that only festers at the top of the economy sucking everything around it until theirs nothing left but the cancer.

because they arent the ones being stripped of their livelihoods to fatten the moneypigs

This might be relevant:

https://youtu.be/J_fZ9o6P0-A?si=-fl7rLryYZBDVgTN&t=194

Conditions here were deplorable by any objective measure. And if you'll recall, one of the hallmarks of early Russian industrialization was: the workforce was often transient. People moved back and forth between their home villages and jobs in the cities, and this flux meant that the places people lived and where they ate and bathed and got medical attention were only ever temporary expedients. It was a bit like you were going off to some particularly crappy summer camp. It was only meant to be temporarily endured, not lived in full time, and so conditions just never got better. People were not just renting rooms; they were renting corners of rooms. You could rent not just a bed, but part of a bed. Sanitation was, of course, practically non-existent, and the food was disgusting. The work itself, meanwhile, was long and grueling. There were no safety standards in the factories. There were hardly any rights for anybody at all. And pay was literally inadequate. The ministry of finance itself surveyed conditions and concluded that a family of four needed about fifty rubles a month to purchase basic necessities (that is, food and shelter and heat) and then they found that 75% of the workers were making less than 30 rubles a month. The economic and moral math was just not adding up.

https://youtu.be/J_fZ9o6P0-A?si=FtaiY47HVyXXBeAP&t=340

The lower skilled, less educated, and still mentally "peasant" workers tended to remain culturally conservative. They were orthodox christian and believed strongly in the divine benevolence of the czar. And indeed one of the things reported by both social democrats and SRs back to their respective central committees was that they struggled to recruit among these workers because they were out there pitching "overthrowing the czar" and everyone was like "What? We... we love the czar, and he loves us too!"

To them, the czar was not a villain, but a hero. Not the devil, but their savior. It understandably made recruiting for a political revolution to overthrow their "hero and savior" very difficult.

https://thehistoryofrome.typepad.com/revolutions_podcast/2020/02/1033-bloody-sunday.html

They believe that the status quo is better than any alternatives. They have not been exposed to other ways of living and those that have lock themselves to basic tribalistic thinking.

Imagine trying to get a sports fan to see the benefits of being a fan of another sports team. Even if they aren’t personally playing and their team isn’t winning they maintain loyalty. Some even bet on their loser teams and lose money just because of loyalty.

It’s all about team loyalty/ tribalism

Stockholm syndrome

I think you know why. Is this a real question or are you just fishing?