- Make a product - Your product is better and cheaper than your competitors - Profit - Consumers profit too because they get the best and cheapest
What capitalism is actually like
- Make a bad product - Use your huge amount of money and political connections to take your competitors off the market and use patent law excessively to further curb any attempt at competition and make insurmountably expensive barriers to entry - Profit - Consumers get screwed over because they get a bad and overpriced product but they got no choice because there's no competition
One of these describes Capitalism. The other describes Corporatism. A lot of people conflate the two. Some people, like Michael Moore, are intellectually dishonest and mislead people deliberately. Other people are legitimately confused because the US falsely brands itself as a Capitalist country, when it is in fact Corporatist. If you fall into the latter category, I'd encourage you to question what people have been selling you.
That's not what corporatism is. Corporatism is the division of society into interest groups like unions or the clergy. Crony capitalism is the term you're looking for.
I'm going to have to put my foot in my mouth, on this one. The word I was looking for is actually "Corporatocracy" (though I concede that "Crony Capitalism" is also more accurate than the word I used). I'm frankly embarrassed to admit that I've been conflating Corporatism and Corporatocracy for several years at least (especially considering how I just accused others of conflation).
Thank you for the correction.
You're good. Corporatism isn't really all that relevant to American economics, so it's a pretty common mistake to make. ---
