- grocery stores
- transportation
- electricity
- various repair-people such as electricians and plumbers
- an employer
- a well-regulated economy
as "being a independent outdoor cat," but then suddenly once you're renting your clothes instead of buying them that's a bridge too far, and you're "captive."
You're right that the terminology of "freedom" and "captivity" is weird...I've always thought it's strange because historically it's been so relative. But I think quibbling over where to draw the line is missing the point, and basically has the same problem as what you're decrying. When we have the power to influence the outcome of something, we shouldn't resign in despair because we can't cleanly classify it...we can still make informed decisions under that uncertainty.
Now look what happens when centrally managed grocery chains, power companies, repair services, etc. move in. All management is centralized. All locals are now employed by one of the big companies following corporate protocol. They are now easily replaceable, so 80% of the town works on a minimum wage after completing a one-week training course. Most of the wealth gets transferred to the corporations. Another 10% of the town works as middle management for the corporations, stuck playing dirty political games. The luckiest 10% keeps positions that cannot be taken by corporations: small niche businesses, trades, doctor practices. Since most of the people are replaceable, people don't really need other people. They depend on corporations instead, so maintaining interpersonal relations becomes unnecessary. People hate each other over small disagreements. They envy others' jobs. They consider life very unfair because in the absence of a clearly visible connection between the merit and the outcome, the grass on the other side always looks greener.
The "well-regulated economy" usually implies raising the taxes for top earners and redistributing the wealth to lower earners. Except, the corporations usually find tricks to avoid it, so you end up taxing the few remaining non-replaceable people, and redistributing it down the road. Supply/demand comes into play, so asset prices rise accordingly, 80% of people still cannot afford a decent living from their salary. Self-improvement still doesn't pay, since the corporations want people to be replaceable. So, social tensions are still high, and on top of that, we start having a shortage of doctors, niche shops, etc., because with the higher taxes and hostile attitude from lower-earners, it's just not worth the hassle anymore. On top of that, we now have a class of social justice politicians, who appeal to groups of people by pitting them against other groups and promising better treatment at the expense of other groups. So not only the pie is shrinking, but we are now supposed to fight for it.
If you want to fix the problem, you need to incentivize personal self-improvement again. Tax the hell out of monopolies, platforms and aggregators. Make sure running your small business (and learning how to make your customers happy) becomes viable again. Give the economic leverage back to the people putting their time into it, and not to the abstract corporations.
If economics taught me anything is that there is always trade-offs; what are possible trade-offs when there is substantial constrains on monopolies, platforms, and aggregators ?
So while middle class jobs running mom-and-pop retail stores are lost, we may gain a commensurate decrease in the cost of goods. I’m not an economist, so I can’t begin to speculate whether this is a net economic gain. Is it better to have more higher paying jobs but more expensive goods, or fewer higher paying jobs and cheaper goods? Is this a false dichotomy? It’s interesting to note that inflation in the price of pretty much all consumer goods has dramatically lagged income inflation over the last 20 years[0], suggesting that net consumer savings have indeed been substantial.
[0] https://www.patientrightsadvocate.org/price-changes-on-selec...
Now a similar thing is happening to the middle class and I don't think enough people will see it this way before it's too late.
The benefits to centralization/aggregation is that things can be made uniform everywhere, which can make things convenient. (e.g. if language A had a monopoly on languages, it would be easy to communicate with others no matter where you go)
It then follows that - the downsides to limiting centralization (or encouraging decentralization) is that things are not necessarily uniform everywhere. (e.g. might be difficult to communicate when everyone's speaking different languages everywhere; difficult to get brand X in market Y)
A well regulated economy usually implies that people can count on stable laws, enforceable contracts, and markets that aren't distorted by the abuse of power.
Taxation usually implies people "paying their fair share" to keep the government working, although the folks to the right often note that for the folks on the left, this usually does seem to mean always wanting to raise the taxes for top earners (and vice versa).