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by wredcoll 13 days ago
What even is "true capitalism"?
1 comments

Usually "true capitalism" means one of two things:

1. Capitalism where there is no government or regulatory interference, and the "invisible hand of the free market" produces some kind of utopian society based purely on every business abiding by rules enforced by no one, where somehow corporations don't take advantage of workers they way they do now despite there being no laws against it.

2. The same thing but sarcastically because it's obvious that that system would be demonstrably worse than the restricted version of capitalism that we have now.

The "invisible hand of the free market" works only, if you have many market participants competing one against another. When a participant wins the competition you get monopoly, when multiple participants collude you get oligopoly, or cartel. Market can not solve this.

Historical examples:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Oil

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoebus_cartel

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DRAM_price_fixing_scandal

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OPEC

If competition was economically efficient, it would happen. Monopolies prove that monopolies are efficient.
Efficient at generating the most value for shareholders? Probably. Efficient at price/performance of product sold? No.