Is it because it's "fashionable", or is it because million of people started directly feeling the adverse effects of it and saw the perpetrators get off scot-free?
> and saw the perpetrators get off scot-free?
And your argument is that the reason for that is free market and private property? I would suggest it might be corruption in the political system, which happens to be "a federal republic" (since we are discussing the US).
> It very necessarily leads to oligarchy when left unchecked.
Great, let's not leave it unchecked. Unlike other -isms, capitalism does not need to be treated like an ideology to work. Also, maybe let's not attribute obvious failures of the political system to the underlying economic system.
In fact, capitalism tends to trend towards monopoly which is the opposite of a free market. Investing in a monopoly tends to be a Very Good Idea for investors but we want a free market so we go against the ideals of capitalism to break up firms and limit acquisitions.
Once you can invest and reliably make money invested by its very nature you get Rich-Get-Richer.
You can say this is a fine trade off for the benefits if you like, but it’s pretty well baked into the design. IMO we don’t have to go all the way to some other -ism either but we have a trillionaire that bought the government, that’s waaaayy too much capitalism if you ask me
And you sound like a kid, bitching about capitalism has gone on for a long time. Why do you think the US.gov was so anti-communist, they didn't want any competition and so turned capitalism into an identity.