That’s actually where democracy came from. When guns came along, it became extremely cheap and easy to turn every random peasant into a soldier. This meant that you essentially always had to have the will of the people on your side.

Are you looking for an inoffensive insult?

One valid use of government power is punishing people who murder, and I’m not exactly sure what power cartels have outside of that.

I googled it and the Wikipedia page said they’re inherently unstable, but I don’t know how reliable that is.

In any case, I don’t see how my second example isn’t a cartel itself. All the bread companies are colluding to set the price of bread artificially high. The problem is there isn’t much to stop new competitors (or to stop members defecting).

I think everything I said applies to stupid people as well.

There’ll always be people who need to rely on charity, but if even a guy in a wheelchair can make a good living and has more opportunities than he can count I’d say that’s a really good sign.

If one company decided that the average bread should cost 50 bucks then I’m going to buy someone else’s bread and that company loses a lot of money.

If every company decided that the average bread should cost 50 bucks, that’s an extraordinary opportunity for a new competitor to come in with reasonable prices.

Save for pay for delay, all of those rely on patents and copy-rights, which are government intervention.

According to the first source, it also looks like competitors are entering and offering lower prices, including open source methods (though I have no idea how that really works). One of the biggest problems for all of them is the government saying “no, you can’t do this or that for whatever reason”. Sometimes it’s good for the government to intercede, but it seems like in this case it’s helping perpetuate monopolies.

If none of the winners offer you a job, make your own, or acquire some marketable skill. You have options and opportunities.

There aren’t as many options for housing as I’d like honestly. I’d prefer less regulation to allow for lower quality, cheaper housing. As it stands though, you still have options and the ability to improve your living conditions.

Insulin prices would be a lot lower if more people were allowed to produce and sell it.

Monopolies are pretty dangerous, and I’d like to avoid then as much as possible.

I think that they’re generally created and sustained by government intervention though. Bailouts, legal fees, red tape, price controls, exceedingly long copyrights, they all hurt new competitors more than established ones.

That leads to a beauty of capitalism though. People prioritize profit, yes, but with competition, the way to make a profit is to be appealing to people. You make a profit by providing the best good or service at the best price. This means that the people who have the goal of profits also have the goal of pleasing their customers.

There’s a quote from somewhere that goes something like this “capitalism takes the most ambitious, selfish, and capable people and forces them to stay up at night thinking about what everyone else wants”.

I wasn’t aware there are ao many other options? Could you reference some?

I guess you could grow and make everything yourself, buy that doesn’t seem like an economic system.

I’m actually not sure how pay was distributed in feudalism, so that could theoretically be another way, but I doubt it is.

Something like UBI would be the latter option.

Maybe if you had capitalism at a macro level, but communism at a micro level. Each town internally worked like communism, but interacted with others in a capitalist fashion. But even there, there will be people in the town distributing pay (or goods and services directly) without you having control over it. You might be able to be especially charismatic, or threaten a revolt, but I don’t think those are things people can typically do.

Not everyone in capitalism is a winner, and that’s ok. The big advantage is that the losers are usually offered the opportunity to work and make a living.

The alternative is crossing your fingers and hoping the government (or whatever body is responsible for distributing pay) gives you what you need. If they don’t, tough luck, there’s nothing you can do about it.