I am a capitalist, but don't agree that our current system vaguely resembles capitalism. The Republicans structure the tax system to benefit the too-big-to-fail business schemes while allowing them to self-regulate (no way that could go terribly wrong, eh, Boeing?), while the Democrats promote excessive bureaucracy to oversee operations, but not often with regard to the scale of operations (a small-scale poultry processor is far less likely to seed a multi-state recall of contaminated products and should not be held to identical standards as a processor running 8000 birds per hour, day and night), or government seizure of the operations altogether.
This book demonstrates why I am a political orphan, a non-plutocratic libertarian with no political home. His political position is also quite clear from the outset of the book (more on that later). He uses the term "monopoly" when 90% of the time he means "oligopoly" or "duopoly," which is annoying, not only because "oligopoly" is a more fun word to say, but because it undermines the argument that increasing competition is possible and good when the are already two competitors (ie, Pepsico/CocaCola/KeurigDrPepper, Colgate-Palmolive/Proctor&Gamble, Apple&Android, etc).
The only hope (and I feel grim after reading this) is for groups like the FTC, SEC, Congress, and the Justice Department to get off PornHub (also a monopoly!*) long enough to block some mergers, break apart some of this collusion and apply anti-trust laws to a lot of current industries. And this book was written in 2019, before covid and the whole situation got much much worse, where small businesses were either starved or swallowed.
And this book was written in 2019, before covid and the whole situation got much much worse, where small businesses were either st BLUF: We're doomed.