[American biased post, because that’s what I know and where I am]
Been screaming that capitalism is not the problem you are experiencing. Monopolies, or more to the point, cartels, have exploded in scope over the past 40-years. Think of a company you hate, a company that’s fucking you over, a company that’s fucking us ALL over. Bet they fit the bill.
Hate your job at Lowe’s? Go to Home Depot! wait… There’s a great family-owned, local hardware store, but I can’t afford to shop there.
Walgreens piss you off? Just go to CVS! well damn… New local pharmacy chain is really nice! They can’t take my insurance.
If you’re under 40, or maybe even under 50, I cannot relate how alien this all is, the words fail me. If you’re in your 20s or 30s, it’s easy to think it was always like this. Oh hell no it was not.
Along with allowing corporations unlimited political “speech”, i.e. campaign contributions, the proliferation of cartels will go down in history as America’s failing point. (Basically the same thing?)
News like the current entertainment mergers didn’t fucking happen. And here on lemmy we’re talking, with a straight face, about the ups and downs of the Netflix/Warner Bros./HBO merger. And if you’ll remember, Warner Bros./Time Warner/AOL was the largest merger in US history!
Saying capitalism isn’t the problem but monopolies are is like saying a cancerous tumor isn’t the problem, but the aggressive metastasis is.
“Stop saying he was killed by a gun! It was the blood loss that did him in!”
Bullets don’t kill people! It’s the hydrostatic shock caused by Newtonian forces that is the real villain!
God damn physics ruining everything.
It wasn’t capitalism that that said bail out large companies when they make bad investments. It wasn’t capitalism that said hand out free loans to any company who asks during covid. It’s not capitalism that prohibited community based ISPs.
It wasn’t capitalism in the same way that “it wasn’t real communism”.
Sure, I guess maybe, but it’s the inevitable outcome of the processes that define capitalism. Just as all kittens become cats, this is what all capitalism becomes.
Alright. What was it then?
Government policy.
Corporate socialism. In real capitalism there would be no government bailouts.
It’s still a shit economic system, but it’s mostly shit because shitty people worm their way to the top. Same with every instance of communism or socialism.
“that’s not real capitalism” now, huh?
You call it “socialism” because it’s failing, but there isn’t anything socialist about it; it’s just late stage capitalism. Capitalism is a system of concentrating power, and this is what happens when you concentrate power.