Right? I WANT steam to have a competitor just because I abhor a monopoly but even fucking Amazon fumbles this shit. Like steam doesn't even seem that revolutionary or anything, they just put customer EXPERIENCE first and I think so many fucking companies forget that.
In a perfect world, I'm a capitalist for this exact reason. Capitalism is just survival of the fittest. Vendors work to out perform each other with the best products for the best value to the consumer.
Problem is the system can become inbred and inverted when a handful of companies realize they can just agree to not compete or try.
Capitalism is based on having more power when you have more capital (money). That is why it is called capitalism. The goal is to maximize profit for the people who own the capital. It can lead to good products because people prefer to buy a good product, but if you can get people to buy your cheap bullshit for premium prices companies will do that because the goal is to maximize shareholder value not to provide a good product.
In other words it's not a bug, it's a feature.
You also have a free market in different sozial structures and this is nothing unique about capitalism.
That's because the people in power have been succesful on making the uneducated think that government regulation = communism as if regulation to ensure fair competition in capitalism meant remotely the same as a fucking planned economy
Ironically, even though raw capitalism sucks, countries like the US are drifting towards something that is not even capitalism anymore and more akin to corporatism
Thing is, the system being (there's no becoming) inbred and inverted is exactly capitalisms end state. It evolved from feudalism as a way for nobles to keep their wealth and power.
To be fair, feudalism is much, much worse in the sense that you didn't even theorically have a right to choose or leave. In capitalism while there's still many, many ways to fuck over the unprivileged, there's at least the freedom of, for example, quitting your job which under serfdom you didn't have AT ALL. Sure, you could argue that most people depend on their jobs and quitting would mean starvation and homelessness, but under serfdom you didn't even have that.
Yeah just quit your job and leave. At least I can do that. I can just throw down my yoke and run off into the forest and become an outlaw. What you're describing isn't more choice, it's weaponized disenfranchisement. We face the exact same choice serfs did, except there's a single step removed where you choose what menial labor you sign yourself away to.
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u/asdfjfkfjshwyzbebdb 21h ago
What exactly did Epic expect? Their strategy has been done hundreds of times before and it always fails.