[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!
I feel like you’re missing the economic system vs. the government system. Those are two separate entities that must be controlled for.
Mu point here is that capitalism is a fucking mess, with no government controls. Of course it is! As with any economic system.
Uh… Government controls the economic system by laws and enforcement of said laws.
Surprise! The system of accumulating power was used to gain power to influence the government to let them gain more power to influence the government to let them gain more power to influence the government… Ad infinitum.
Government regulation of capitalism is fundamentally impossible in the long term, unless you lock it down early into something barely recognizable as capitalism. That ship has sailed long long ago.
politics and economy are not separate worlds. capital, monopoly or not, is political power greater than any vote or government seat
what sense does it make to say you’ll keep the ruling class in check while letting them keep their power?
can you make a benevolent mafia by taxing the racket and breaking up mafia monopolies?
Well yeah any economic system requires government oversight to be effective but that’s because there isn’t really a decoupling of government and economics. Our current governments around the world are primarily representative democratic nation states and they are neoliberal capitalist institutions. These are not separate, both have evolved alongside each other and we are currently seeing them crack under pressure together. There is no point in making this distinction at the macro level.