Modern capitalism has become a “Radical Monopoly” and a logical fallacy.
Social activities become radical monopoly when they become ends in themselves. For more information, See Ivan Illich”s Tool for Conviviality.
Here is how it happened for capitalism. Smith said if you are entrepreneurial enough to get up early in the morning to knead your dough, you can sell your bread for a profit; the market’s invisible hand will prevent you from making too much of it.
In other words, if you are productive for society, you can make a profit, the competition will take care you don’t make too much of it.
Today’s rich people sleep well, telling themselves: I make profits, I am good for society.
In Smith’s time, markets (marché in French) were places where buyers good walk and choose among sellers. The consumers were controlling the market.
Not anymore; today’s markets are virtual entities controlled by profits.
Illich’s radical monopolies were entities that always defeated the goals for winch they were initially made to attain. Capitalism was created to eliminate the monarchy and the aristocracy of the time that considered profit a sin.
Capitalism has failed since the aristocracy of today has exponentially increased by millions.
That is because the Noble Price Comity gave the 1976 Price in economics to Professor Milton Friedman for having supported the fallacy that the ultimate goal of enterprises was to produce profit for their investors.
Then, Ronald Reagan, an actor, read Friedman’s “script,” accepts the role of propagator of this falsehood, and delivers an academy-award performance in front of the world.
But, in counterparts, this actor saved the world since, without his performance, capitalists would not have dared monopolize some 90% of the profits of the post-1980 economy, and the world would have reached the point of no return by now since, for instance, one $600 million yacht causes a lot less pollution than 12,000 $50,000 one.
The time has come for the “oligarchs’” of the world to put their money to a good cause and be good to the world by trying to save it so their names are written on the edifice of history.
One way or another, they gonna die like everybody else.
Go figure; they are the only ones we have left for saviors.
If they ever use their trillions to save the world, they will have been right to elevate Reagan to sainthood.