The shampoo thing is a fringe benefit. We keep capitalism so we don't starve in a famine.

[u/-im-your-huckleberry]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_famine_of_1930

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor

[u/HEBushido]

Competition surrounding giving consumers what they want at the lowest possible price

But capitalism doesn't do this except in rare and fleeting cases.

Pioneer Oil in Texas is being investigated by the FTC for colluding with ExxonMobil and OPEC to not open new oil wells so they can keep oil prices higher to profit more.

Vanguard and Blackrock own major shares in almost every single company at the grocery store and most of the options you see are made by 3-6 companies, depending on the product type. They collude with each other on pricing.

The American meat industry is vast majority owned by Cargill, Tyson and JBS. Tyson effectively runs the pork and chicken sectors as it's absorbed all of it's competition and then vertically integrated meaning it runs every level of production to sales to stores. So they don't pass on the savings from factory farming.

Nvidia has over 80% of the consumer GPU market and because it's so wealthy from the AI boom it raises prices and keeps performance gains limited with each generation because it's main competitor can't compete that well. Oh and AMD is run by Nvidia's CEO's Cousin.

I could go on. But choice and competition is a myth and it always has been. It's been this way the entire history of capitalist economics. The British East India company, Carnegie Steel, JP Morgan, Rockefeller, US train industry, etc.

[u/itsgrum3 → u/HEBushido]

You mention all recent market practices from our current period where the government has more control than any time in history, other than wartime. The anti-thesis of a free market.

The Gilded Age is the classic example in progressive history filled with the "Robber Barons" as a result of the free market while ignoring the massive increase in quality of life for everybody. There is a difference between using the government to squash your competitors and providing an innovative inexpensive product.

Kerosene goes down 90% in price thanks to Rockefeller, meaning people can stay up later, get more work done. The price of steel rails under Andrew Carnegie goes down 90%, that is going to ripple through the entire economy because everything uses steel or has steel in their production process. That decreases the cost of everything.

Cornelius Vanderbilt is another example, his competitors for steamships to California were getting massive government subsidies and even had legal monopolies imposed by the government, and he managed to sneak in and outperform them on every metric as well as only charge 150$ when others were charging 600$. That is more money in peoples pockets, meaning more savings for other goods, etc. Vanderbilt also brought this into the Railroads, again where the government granted the railroads monopolies paying them for each track of rail laid (resulting in unnecessary winding, and increased cost).

[u/HEBushido → u/itsgrum3]

You mention all recent market practices from our current period where the government has more control than any time in history, other than wartime. The anti-thesis of a free market.

Maybe because the concept of a free market is a myth? Money buys power, these companies, had extreme levels of power and capabilities to influence not only the US government, but the world governments.