Polish book cover - "Golden Age"

Germany could also have a booming economy, if the peasants would just work for 5 DM/hour and 60h/week again!

Angry Merz noises

Germany had it quite good for some time, the concept of taming capitalism under "soziale Marktwirtschaft" did work, but then greed and corruption happened, and the restraining elements were being dropped one by one, resulting in the overly rich using their new found freedom to exploit everyone and everything else for their own short term profits with zero repercussions. Neoliberal politicians in practically all relevant parties did support this through both ideology and corruption, and now we're left with an outright ridiculous shitshow of crumbling infrastructure and increasingly dysfunctional institutions. But line go up!

concept of taming capitalism under “soziale Marktwirtschaft” did work

Could it be that the elite restrained itself to make Capitalism look good while Communism existed?

We are now seeing unrestrained Capitalism and ihe inability of the masses to restrain it, like Communist literature predicts.

After seeing the effects, could the regular citizens be motivated to put in the work to do the restraining? Could they further be motivated to make the investment decisions to create the next generation of successful companies?

Could it be that the elite restrained itself to make Capitalism look good while Communism existed?

That's very likely a factor.

After seeing the effects, could the regular citizens be motivated to put in the work to do the restraining? Could they further be motivated to make the investment decisions to create the next generation of successful companies?

Greed does corrupt people. Unless the restraints come from top down in the form of law, it's very unlikely for them to be long lived.

There are enough laws and the top ignores them or removes them. I think the foundation for the restraints has to come from the citizens themselves.

Just to put that comparison into some perspective that's not skewed by the boundless greed of a Friedrich Merz and his ilk: Back in the day when the peasants did this, the rich also did pay a way higher share of their income and property as taxes, and the peasants could afford way more for that money.