You can't disown capitalism from its problems that easily. It's not hard to see that it is in short-term self interest to form cartels, lobby for regulation, crush competition and treat their (now captive) customers with contempt.
This is a pattern we have seen time and again. Describing this as "about as far away as you can get from capitalism" is the no true Scotsman fallacy. Perhaps it doesn't match how you believe capitalism should work or you have a very different definition of capitalism to the more regular meaning of the term.
really-existing capitalism involves co-opting local power structures (parliaments, legislatures, dictatorships, puppets, etc.) to protect your cartel.
If capitalism is only capitalism when there is no conglomerated power structure then capitalism is impossible.
Often enough today its the left who are defenders of capitalism (ie., of disentangling power structures from coporate control) whereas the right seems possessed by the idea that whatever a company does is by definition captailism.
Capitalism was all about recognizing that business interests are anti-capitalist.
> really-existing capitalism involves co-opting local power structures (parliaments, legislatures, dictatorships, puppets, etc.) to protect your cartel.
I grew up in a communist country and guess what: politicians co-opted local power structures for their personal benefit. They drove the good cars, had the nice houses at the lakes and hard (= Western) currency. This is the case for (AFAIK) every single "socialist" state.
The only difference was that in socialism, corruption was not done for the benefit of a company but for an individual.
Do you really think that once the economic system changes, they (= we) are all suddenly better people?
It's the power itself that is corrupted and it doesn't matter how or by whom or in what system, the end result is the same.
Really-existing communism is bad too. I think worse than really-existing capitalism as it had to pass through a dictatorship stage to be realised, and dictatorships are extremely hard to renounce when formed.
What I was saying was a defence of the fundamental economic model of capitalism, not a criticism of it.
> we are all suddenly better people?
Yes. People are largely ethical products of situations they find themselves in. Reduce the number of opportunities for bad behaviour and you get Good People.
unaccountable systems of power are the recurring situations causing bad-behaviour here.
A healthy democratic capitalism aligns the interests of those power with the people. So that capital owners do not seize control.
"Capital" is not capitalist. It is anti-capitalist, wanting to monopolize and dictate.
To me, this is like saying social engineering isn't a security problem.
It seems pretty obvious that, if your aim is to accumulate capital, regulatory capture is a pretty damn efficient strategy as compared to marketing or product development. It's also efficient for the government official, who gets to sell access to regulation processes (an otherwise difficult-to-sell service!) at market rates.
(Not that libertarian-style "OK, let's get rid of governments!" approaches are a good solution here. In that case, the optimal strategy becomes force, which in effect establishes a government of sorts.)
This is a pattern we have seen time and again. Describing this as "about as far away as you can get from capitalism" is the no true Scotsman fallacy. Perhaps it doesn't match how you believe capitalism should work or you have a very different definition of capitalism to the more regular meaning of the term.