Right now all the winners are chosen by the government. Thus, it is not based on meritocracy but entirely on connections.
Also, government and corporations have merged to such an extend that competition with existing players are not even possible.
I think a good classification for the current system would be neofeudalism. You are either a noble with connections or a peasant.
Not true
> government and corporations have merged to such an extend that competition with existing players are not even possible.
Look at s&p500 cos from 2000 and now, there is a huge amount of displacement (due to competition).
There could be a bank run on Chase tomorrow and they wouldn’t be able to hold. The only thing keeping everything together is folks not panicking.
That applies to a great many things in modern society.
It's quite difficult for a free market of any sort to function when you have a government that becomes capable of arbitrarily distributing effectively unlimited funds at their discretion. This is even more true when that "discretion" is often whimsical and self destructive. So you look at the various graphs seeing things like skyrocketing wealth inequality, inflation, government debt, and more - and all one can think is, "Gee, who'd of thunk?"
In any case, it's important to appreciate that our current monetary system only began about 50 years ago.
- De-regulation of banks prior to 2008
- Austerity vs stimulus in EU vs US post 2008
- Austerity post COVID in UK
- Healthspan outcomes in places with lax environmental safety regulations (us early 20th century, China more recently)
- Fishery collapse throughout oceans due to lack of government intervention
- Hunted animal population collapses (prior to intervention) and rebounding (after intervention)
The list could go on much much more…
Tragedy of commons just occurs everywhere all the time
The rest are solid data points at a glance though.
And that includes all the adjustments to how they calculate CPI they like to include almost every recession to make it look less bad.
Recessions and bubbles occur more often in unregulated economies.