There is a lot to be said that is good about free market capitalism; of which, perhaps the best thing that could be said, is that competitiveness, without any favoritism or an unfair advantage built-in, is definitely going to bring out the best in those so competing against one another, because within that construct, we so find that each company has to therefore be very, very good at what they are so doing in just about every aspect of that business, or else some other company is probably going to surpass or supersede the other, in which therefore the ultimate prime beneficiaries of that sort of competitiveness is going to be the general public.
Regrettably, at the highest echelons of the biggest and most powerful corporations that are headquartered in the United States, these companies, almost without exception, aren’t exemplars whatsoever of free market capitalism; but rather represent in practice, corporations that desire, more than anything, to do everything that they possibly can, to preclude other companies from infringing upon their turf by, for instance, barriers of entry, or rules and regulations structured to favored them, or by collusion with others in the same nature of business, or by buying out or merging with other upstarts or innovators, or pretty much doing whatsoever has to be done to tilt the playing field, to being perpetually set in their favor.
Typically, when a corporation first starts out, that corporation is going to be innovative, with employees of that company, willing to work long, smart, and hard, because they understand well that within a competitive environment, that resting on one’s laurels isn’t a good move, and also it isn’t realistic to expect customers to rush up to their door, to buy their product or service, without having made first a strong concerted effort to win their business. This thus signifies that corporations have to really put forth the effort to get the return that they so desire and of which, that good and justified return, may be a long time in coming – without any guarantee that it will so come, or even be sustained.
Not too surprisingly, for all those people and corporations that work hard to get to a good place, there is a tendency at some point in the process, in which there comes the conscious recognition that free market capitalism isn’t really the type of environment that lends itself well to secure profits and growth. This then is the moment in which there are truly two roads that diverge, and the one that so many of these behemoth corporations ultimately take is that one in which, they recognize that more profit and growth is going to be enabled if they circumvent competition and free markets, by deliberately gaming the system in specific ways that benefits them, above all else.
There are many that defend this biased and bastardized version of capitalism, because as partisans to such, they are the very people, that as executives, or stockholders, or highly valued employees, or those that have a vested interest in a particular corporation and its success, for whatever reason, want what they want, because they are the beneficiaries to it. The thing is, though, that isn’t free market capitalism, and the more companies that are monopolistic in nature, or collude with one another, leads directly to more money being unfairly extracted from the general public.