@samir nah dude, capitalism absolutely means overreach and monopoly.

You can have markets without capitalism, but you can’t have capitalism without overreach and monopolies. Capitalism is only “capital (rich people) want to further grow their riches by exploiting labor and the market to maximize returns”

We’ve had monopolies for as long as we’ve had capitalism. They arguably started with wealthy companies realizing they could maximize their returns by convincing British royalty to give them exclusive rights to various things. That was done through what we would today call lobbying. Prices skyrocketed.

Standard oil didn’t become a monopoly because it started with all the oil, it did it by buying out competition, which is core to capitalism. It did it by selling under value to drive out competition, which is core to capitalism. If your only goal is to maximize returns, which is definitionally what capitalism is, then you have to lobby for government favor. You have to destroy competition. You have to destroy labor movements. You have to move as much manufacturing overseas as possible, and then keep those countries poor and underdeveloped on purpose to keep your labor prices low. You have to corner the market as much as possible, because to do anything else is to violate your mandate to maximize profits for owners and shareholders.

Capitalism requires lobbying to weaken regulation. It requires anticompetitive practices. It requires keeping workers in a position where they have as little power as possible so that you can keep wages low, it requires lobbying against minimum wage increases, lobbying against universal health care or free education, or rights to food or housing, because those things limit your ability to manipulate the labor market for your own profits.

If you don’t do these things then the board will replace you. If you don’t act in the most psychopathic ways possible then shareholders can actually sue.

That is what capitalism is. Capitalism isn’t “free markets.” Markets have existed for thousands of years, capitalism started with the East Indian trading company, which started all the gross bullshit.

The things you’re talking about hating about Google are the parts of Google that interface with capitalism.