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this post was submitted on 28 Sep 2025
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Capitalism was always tyranny with extra steps. Everyone kind of accepts that private enterprise forms a rigid hierarchy with the CEO or managing director at the top with ultimate power, but they accepted that because legal constraints and market competition supposedly meant that misrule would lead to failure for that organisation. In reality, oligopoly wields power over both the market and externalities via regulatory capture, which is close to absolute in many countries.
Capitalism has more steps between you and tyranny than the feudalism it replaced in most places, so it was an upgrade.
Much like feudalism, though, the lords deteriorated over time (inbreeding and deregulation respectively), so it's well past time to upgrade again. Ridding ourselves of tyranny would be nice, but I have a feeling that state capitalism (as seen in the PRC, Vietnam, etc.) is a more likely replacement. It's another incremental upgrade that will hopefully give us the time to relax and organize to push for yet another step.