America likes to pride itself of the virtues of capitalism, believing that such is the best economic system, ever. It would be one thing, if capitalism, really did represent competition at its finest, and if capitalism, in its effect, really made for the best economic conditions for people, as a whole; but rather as practiced at the present time in America, this is wholly untrue.
The main problem with what is called capitalism in today’s world, is that as currently practiced, such is no more than a bastardization of what capitalism should really represent. There are all sorts of significant flaws with capitalism as exercised in America, of which, the first is that there is a significant lack of truly meaningful competition in virtually all sectors of the economy of America, such as, for instance, the defense industry, health insurance, airlines, food services, fuel, and home improvement stores, to mention just a few. To a very large extent, these industries, have only a few big players, of which each have their spheres of influence, as well as a very good understanding one to another, of what, is expected from one another. In other words, while on the surface, it might appear that they compete against one another, it would be more honest to say, that they are in de facto collusion or in coordination with one another, instead.
Secondly, despite the fact that the hi-technology world is relatively young, it has divided itself into segments in which there are truly dominant players and effectively nobody else to compete against them; of which, in those cases, in which some sort of upstart competition might take a bite of their dominant share, these young, small, and vulnerable competitors are typically permitted by the government to be bought out by the respective dominant player, at will. So then, what we so find is that when it comes to search engines, social media, and the operating system of our personal computers, each has one main player, which thereby permits such to effectively boss the market to their exclusive benefit.
Thirdly, American companies have all sorts of patents, of which, the good purpose of a given patent, should be, to provide for those that put forth a major effort in regards to time, expenditures, as well as research and development, to reap over a reasonable period of time, the corresponding benefits of that effort. Instead, what we so often find, is that patents for a lot of things, is really nothing much more than a selfish play to benefit the very few, at the expense of the many, without taking into fair consideration all the public knowledge, knowhow, and infrastructure so utilized to patent this “newfound” knowledge.
Finally, there is our banking and credit system, which seems to be fundamentally based upon the loaning out of money to people and institutions at an appreciably higher rate than what that money so costs the lender. What makes this business especially pernicious is that when times are good these banking institutions make money hand over fist; and when those same banking institutions make major errors they then get bailed out by the government, which really means, being bailed out by the taxpayers, which represents the same people that these banks have been exploiting for their own private profit.
As it stands, capitalism could indeed be saved, and could indeed be of real service to the people, but in actuality, because this government is wont not to break up those institutions that have too much power and too much money, what is occurring, is that never has it been easier, for those that dominant their particular market, to make that easy, easy money.