[otterdude]

I think a couple of things are play here

1. corporate consolodation - the only promise of capitalism is that competition lowers prices. Competition is at an all time low.

2. economics and the fallacy of unlimited growth. We live on a finite size planet, and every company is acting as though it expects 10% growth to increase forever. If demand increases and supplies dwindle thats one large prevailing force that would mask as inflation.

The establishment and universities are failing us as they refuse to critically study and address these major conceptual issues.

[win311fwg]

> the only promise of capitalism is that competition lowers prices.

The only promise of capitalism is that you are allowed to own capital. Competition and prices come from markets, not capitalism.

[otterdude]

You have it backwards.

People have owned property, and worked since the dawn of time, the core original idea in the wealth of nations is that competition lowers prices... thats where the idea of markets come from.

The only real "benefit" come from competition through lower prices, the rest of the factors ie property and labor in a free exchange are the requirements to reach the optimal outcome.

[win311fwg]

Have what backwards? Capitalism and markets are clearly different concepts. Consider the single company town. The capital is privately owned but the economy is centrally planned. There is no competition lowering prices, but there is capitalism. The capital is most definitely not communally owned.

There is another concept, market capitalism, which describes where markets and capitalism come together. That may be what you are thinking of, but that isn't what we are talking about in the discussion. The original comment clearly wrote "capitalism" and not "market capitalism". What was said about markets in that comment holds true even without capitalism, so we have logical confirmation that it wasn't a case of accidentally leaving out "market" in front of "capitalism".