The problem with this argument is that it relies on a No True Scotsman fallacy. Every time capitalism’s outcomes are criticized, the response is that we do not live under true capitalism. The system that actually exists is always treated as an aberration rather than the logical result of capitalist incentives operating over time.

The bureaucratic monopolistic society you describe is not a corruption external to capitalism. It is capitalism doing exactly what it is structurally incentivized to do. Capitalism’s defining objective is not serving people. It is profit maximization. Selling something for more than it costs to produce. That incentive does not stop at the market boundary. Firms rationally seek to reduce competition, shape rules in their favor, raise barriers to entry, and externalize costs such as healthcare, labor, education and environmental damage.

When capital accumulates, the most efficient way to protect profit is no longer innovation. It is political influence.This is not socialism. It is regulatory capture, a phenomenon extensively documented in mainstream economics. Industries systematically capture regulators to serve profit and shareholder interests rather than the public. Public Choice Theory explains how private actors use the state to entrench economic advantage. Peer reviewed research has repeatedly linked market concentration to lobbying power and weakened competition and demonstrates that capital concentration naturally converts into political power unless it is actively countered.

The regulations you are pointing to are not anti capitalist constraints imposed from outside the system. They are capitalist behaviors expressed through the state. Capital does not invade government accidentally. It does so because it is profitable.

This is why food insecurity and healthcare failures exist inside wealthy capitalist nations. Healthcare markets optimize for revenue rather than outcomes as documented by the World Health Organization and the Commonwealth Fund. Food systems prioritize shareholder value resulting in both massive waste and widespread hunger. Market choice disappears when industries consolidate, something the Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice openly acknowledge has accelerated.

Saying real capitalism would wipe out big business ignores history. Unregulated capitalism has never remained competitive for long. It tends toward monopoly because scale, capital accumulation, and political leverage are competitive advantages. If capitalism were self correcting, it would not require perpetual bailouts, repeated antitrust interventions, or constant state support to prevent collapse. The fact that it does is evidence that the outcomes being criticized are not a deviation from capitalism but its mature form. Capitalism concentrated wealth beyond our imaginations. We live in a post scarcity environment where victims of capitalism and socio economic factors alike keep hundreds of millions unhoused, hungry and sick while the capitalist owners, that by nature produce nothing (proof of work) and only extract value through rent seeking behaviors, enjoy socialist benefits provided by and extracted from the workers that produce all of the things of value that we use. It’s become very common for the capitalist to rage against socialism while they enjoy all of our socialist benefits and initiatives while insisting that the rest of society must stick to raw unfettered capitalism. It’s also very common now for uneducated and ill informed workers to defend capitalism and vote against their own self interest as well. Capitalism only favors those who have breached a certain threshold of accumulation which is only achieved and made possible through extortion of the worker.