I might get a bit of hate for this, but fuck it. Capitalism isn't evil, just flawed enough that the evil can take advantage of it. Socialism makes sure that people have what they need, very good. Capitalism lets people get what they want. I propose smashing those 2 together with rather heavy regulations to prevent exploitation. This has kind of been done, but to a rather light extent. I'm not an economist, I'm just a guy. Don't listen to me. Eh, like 3 people will see this. How's your day going?

This is a failure of government to block these kinds of acquisitions. Google shouldn't be allowed to buy so many companies.

Have you ever listened to a child invent some piece of mythology and try to pass it off as fact? Maybe it's just my kids, but they like to make stuff up to explain stuff they don't understand. Like one time my kid said that the postal worker lives at the post office, and that all the mail in the whole country arrives at her house where she sorts it and then delivers it to everyone like Santa Claus. There's a series of pneumatic tubes going every which way, and a fleet of postal trucks to save time on refueling. There was a whole team supporting her as she drove across the country, making deliveries. She ate flavored stamps and slept in an envelope-shaped bed.

My point is, nobody told her that's what happens. She understood some of the concept and filled in the rest with what she thought might be true, what she thought should be true, what she hoped was true.

Nobody who understands capitalism has ever thought that capitalism creates fair competition or encourages innovation. People who say it does are either lying or they are talking about how they think it should work, ideally, because they have not yet realized that it cannot work that way. The mythology of capitalism is repeated and shared and taught like gospel, and with the same level of critical thinking.

I heard a comedian and an atheist point out that, if all the science books were destroyed and all the scientific knowledge lost, eventually humans would rediscover every truth. If every holy text were destroyed, and all religious theology lost, those ideas and stories would be gone forever.

Were society to collapse, and civilization had to start anew with no concept of economics, you can be damn sure capitalism would make an appearance, only it wouldn't be called capitalism.

Easy laws that could stop this bullshit:

1. A company can't own other companies.

2. A company cannot have more than 2500 employees.

3. A company cannot employ contractors, outside or temporary workers numbering more than 10% of it's total work force.

No mega corporations, no buying out competition, no loopholes to employment standards.

Edit; forgot a main one

4. The highest paid individual cannot make more than 40x the lowest paid employee.

No c suite billionaires avoiding paying the workers.

Also "I replaced spring water with filtered sewage water, makes my product taste like shit but I can produce it for a fraction of the cost and sell it for the same price"

I don't want to defend capitalism, but the bottom panel depicts activity that is very illegal in the US (but antritrust laws have not been enforced by the FTC since the 1980s, barring a few short years in 2020s under Lina Khan).

Capitalism definitionally requires competition, without it you have... something even worse.

Also..."I am legally a person so my dozens/hundreds of lawyers and billions of dollars will just sue you into oblivion"

Also: I just bribed politicians who will let more uneducated immigrants in so I can exploit their labor and pay them pennies on the dollar compared to your local laborers. And I started a culture war so that anyone who raises concern to the immigration and how it suppresses wages will be silenced and called a racist by the left even though it undermines their own cause.

This actually happened in Europe.

You invented technology that makes my company more efficient. After buying your company and laying off 20% of my workforce, we have increased our profits by 100%. Bonuses for all ^executives^