One of the tenants of capitalism is that you, the consumer, should demand more-for-less
Oh dear, that was never a tenet of capitalism. Capitalism has only one tenet: amass as much capital as possible at all costs. Literally anything goes, including and especially capturing and controlling markets by stifling competition.
It’s a natural byproduct though. Assuming a free enough market, you should have several people all supplying the same good. Some will compete on price, some on quality, and some on overall service.
The problems happen when competition evaporates, either from regulations raising the barrier to entry, acquisitions, or resource scarcity. Capitalism assumes people are greedy and pits them against each other to provide better services to everyone. A lack of competition isn’t “capitalism functioning as intended,” but instead the opposite, it means something is preventing capitalism from working as intended.
It also requires perfectly rational actors with perfect information. If they can suppress information about competition or manipulate you to have loyalty then it doesn’t work, and both of these happen constantly.
I don’t think that’s necessarily true. If the market is sufficiently free, you only need a handful of experts to look past the BS and inform the public. In the past, we called those people journalists, and they would hold bad actors to task.
The issue seems to be that government has given in to moneyed interests and allowed them to shut down critics. If we had actual consequences, like jail time or confiscation of personal wealth for illegal behaviour, I think it would self-correct.
You appear to be conflating Capitalism with the concept of free markets. They are wholly different and distinct concepts, regardless of what Capitalism’s propagandists would like everyone to believe.
Capitalism, being an economic dogma that worships private ownership and relentless pursuit and hoarding of wealth, actively incentivizes behavior that destroys free markets: trusts, monopolies, oligopolies, regulatory capture, sabotage, patents, union busting, mergers and acquisitions, financialization, and more, gradually eroding any free market until it no longer meaningfully exists.
When most people refer to capitalism, they mean free market or laissez-faire capitalism. Many (most?) of the issues you mentioned require government to step in to occur. For example:
trusts - government structure to protect wealth
oligopoly - failure of government to prevent collusion (price fixing and whatnot are expressly anti-competitive)
regulatory capture - government must be complicit since regulations are typically a government thing
I think government has a place in protecting the free market, but it needs to be restrained so it doesn’t get manipulated into destroying the free market. For example, a regulation could protect consumers, but it could also raise the barrier to entry and prevent competition from correcting the underlying problem.
A lot of the issues stem from corporate welfare, where wealthy people are able to manipulate corporate structures to build their own wealth and protect themselves from liability. I think it’s largely those liability protections that encourage anti-competitive behavior. End the protections and courts can meaningfully punish corporations when they break the law.
Oh dear, that was never a tenet of capitalism. Capitalism has only one tenet: amass as much capital as possible at all costs. Literally anything goes, including and especially capturing and controlling markets by stifling competition.
It’s a natural byproduct though. Assuming a free enough market, you should have several people all supplying the same good. Some will compete on price, some on quality, and some on overall service.
The problems happen when competition evaporates, either from regulations raising the barrier to entry, acquisitions, or resource scarcity. Capitalism assumes people are greedy and pits them against each other to provide better services to everyone. A lack of competition isn’t “capitalism functioning as intended,” but instead the opposite, it means something is preventing capitalism from working as intended.
It also requires perfectly rational actors with perfect information. If they can suppress information about competition or manipulate you to have loyalty then it doesn’t work, and both of these happen constantly.
I don’t think that’s necessarily true. If the market is sufficiently free, you only need a handful of experts to look past the BS and inform the public. In the past, we called those people journalists, and they would hold bad actors to task.
The issue seems to be that government has given in to moneyed interests and allowed them to shut down critics. If we had actual consequences, like jail time or confiscation of personal wealth for illegal behaviour, I think it would self-correct.
You appear to be conflating Capitalism with the concept of free markets. They are wholly different and distinct concepts, regardless of what Capitalism’s propagandists would like everyone to believe.
Capitalism, being an economic dogma that worships private ownership and relentless pursuit and hoarding of wealth, actively incentivizes behavior that destroys free markets: trusts, monopolies, oligopolies, regulatory capture, sabotage, patents, union busting, mergers and acquisitions, financialization, and more, gradually eroding any free market until it no longer meaningfully exists.
When most people refer to capitalism, they mean free market or laissez-faire capitalism. Many (most?) of the issues you mentioned require government to step in to occur. For example:
I think government has a place in protecting the free market, but it needs to be restrained so it doesn’t get manipulated into destroying the free market. For example, a regulation could protect consumers, but it could also raise the barrier to entry and prevent competition from correcting the underlying problem.
A lot of the issues stem from corporate welfare, where wealthy people are able to manipulate corporate structures to build their own wealth and protect themselves from liability. I think it’s largely those liability protections that encourage anti-competitive behavior. End the protections and courts can meaningfully punish corporations when they break the law.