The problem is that people who praise capitalism usually forgot that Adam Smith included 10 requirements in order for the free market to work. Things like “complete and accurate knowledge of the market”, “no ineficiencies”, “many providers and customers“ (So no monopolies or oligopolies), Interchangeable products of the same quality and so on. As you can imagine, not a single of that conditions is met on the real world. People is not rational and doesn’t make rational choices (no matter how much we claim we are) and there are many external cost that aren’t accounted for.
But if you acknowledge that there are market inficiencies, you can try to legislate to fix those inficiencies. Antimonopoly laws are one example, but also laws agains lies on publicity, fake promises for a product, quality requirements, safety measures on production and so on. The more close to the ideal market, the best capitalism would work.
On the other hand, pure capitalism is not that good. Even strong capitalism supporters agree that some things are better provided by the government that the private sector (like justice or an army). And then, there are things like healthcare, that seems to work better if is public and universal. Compare Europe healthcare with USA and you would see that life expectancy is higher in Europe, so that service works better as public.
Now, I’ve seen many straw man about “killing the greedy people” as if capitalism didn’t started wars or something. No, I’m not even advocationg for comunism. But a mix model, socialism, has been invented a long time ago. And most modern countries have a version of that. Even USA (or you won’t be paying taxes and having police, to put a clear example).
Finding the right balance and legislation that fix market ineficiencies is what might built a better system. But is not an easy tax.
