Completely agree. The problem is not that capitalism is just blanket bad, or something reductive like that, but instead: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20956786
Capitalism specifically enables a meta-game of spreading as dogma.
Capitalism specifically enables a meta-game of spreading as dogma.
If it was truly "capitalist" then literally anyone would be free to hang a shingle and provide medical services (kind of like car mechanics), there would be competing professional accreditations (trademarked brands) as well (kind of like private technical certificates). But when the "market" is so perverted, "capitalism" (whatever is left of it) gets a bad rap because the incentives are fked to begin with.
In a democratic country, the populace regularly campaigns for new regulations to counteract some of the bad behavior incentivized by capitalism and the negative externalities produced by capitalism. We're chatting in a thread about California banning private prisons, for example.
In fact, I'm not even sure regulation by a state is something opposed to capitalism. Rather, regulation enables capitalism.
One could view capitalism as a system of regulations that attempts to limit the ways that people can profit from one another, ideally by limiting them to value-creating activities, but at a minimum blocking them from nefarious and value-destroying activities. If you want money, it's far easier to take it by force, or trickery, or monopoly, or coercion, or bribery, or espionage, or cutting corners, or nourishing addiction, or any number of unsavory things.
Capitalism is an attempt to cut off these options, at least to the extent that many people abandon them, and instead decide to create value for others instead.