There is a subtlety missing here. Capitalism can certainly lead to bad things like monopolies and the abuse of workers, but capitalist economies rely on free markets, where individuals and businesses can freely engage in transactions without significant government intervention.
I would hardly call what the administration is doing right now to markets "insignificant government intervention". One of the tenets of capitalism is free markets and they're certainly less free than before. It's some hideous blend of fascism and pseudo-capitalism.
If a market is free, it is exploitable. Capitalism actually
always leads to monopolies and abuses of workers' rights. Any fighting against those things has been done by workers at the expense of capitalists, and the last time we had significant work reform it took many, many dead bodies.
If the system is fundamentally set up so that those who accumulate the most wealth accumulate the most power, then those folks will inevitably work to corrupt any safeguards that are put in place, and it is always going to be a matter of time until we remember the boot at our neck. There is absolutely
no world in which capitalism leads to all humans being fed, because that isn't profitable. There isn't a technological limit on that anymore, as there has been for the rest of human history. The only reason people starve to death is because capitalists have decided that they are content with people starving to death so they can have more.
We wiped out
measles. One of the deadliest diseases in human history. We have the productive capacity now to do things like wiping out entire diseases, producing massive excesses of calories and nutritional supplements, and providing ample housing and education to all people. The fact that we
don't do any of those things is explicitly the fault of those who created and perpetuate this zero-sum system. As long as capitalists are in charge and believe they have a right to everything while every other human has a right to nothing, we will see
constant and increasing violence, famine, war, plague, and death. The climate crisis is going to wipe out tens of millions if not more, and that's not accounting for the mass migration as decent portions of the planet become uninhabitable to humans.
Every single capitalist--every single billionaire, who has decided they can have more money than nations while entire other nations starve--is responsible for this. Every single one of them is aware of the coming climate crisis. This is the very first time in human history that we have genuine, globally-interconnected systems, and instead of using ALL of that brainpower to solve our issues, our leaders have told us that only they can fix the world while they rob us blind. There has never been a truly global empire before. This is a level of evil that cannot be described in any historical context. It only ends one way.
@TigoleBitties American capitalism is virtually unregulated because there is a belief that the market regulates itself. European capitalism is more regulated and places more emphasis on consumer rights. That's why Europe has health care systems and a welfare state and America has poor labor rights. That is one point why Trump hates europe. American capitalism is almost the most deviant form of capitalism there is.
Free markets are not the goal of capitalism, free regulated markets are, because the market cannot control itself. A good example is X, what is sold as free (here speech) is really oppression (here truth). If you look at the history of America, this strigently leads to this point where it is, because the sequence of events is not surprising. It's more surprising that it's happening now. Capitalism is perhaps basically positive, but the development in history is negative. The greatest suffering, most slaves and deaths of mankind are victims of capitalism, but communism was much worse....
Authoritarianism
always results in mass death. Communist countries across the board saw massive quality of life increases initially as power was distributed to the people, but those increases were always eroded because setting up a dictatorship of the proletariat ultimately still means there is a dictator, and that level of concentrated power can never produce results that are agreeable to the greatest number of people possible. Without self-determination, there is no system that will be good. Self-determination and the weakening of modern nation-states, corporations, and institutions go hand-in-hand.
And the idea that communism was worse is also questionable. Capitalism saw the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, two world wars, mass incarceration states with deplorable conditions, the opioid crisis, the war on terror and its subsequent genocides, forced sterilizations of minority groups, and about a million other mass-death/genocidal events. I do not say this as a means of venerating Stalinist Russia or Maoist China, but to point out that much of the perceived "superiority" of capitalism over communism is propaganda that allows authoritarians in the West to rule without question cuz "at least we aren't commies".
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