Answer by Bob Win:
Most of the answers here are based on an optimistic view of the capitalist economy where things work out beautifully. But as we all knew, in life or in the world, nothing is perfect or always functions smoothly, especially when it comes to a huge and extremely complex webs of systems like an economy which depends on zillions of interacting factors (that’s why most stock predicting gurus perform worse than the market over some period of time).
We also knew about human nature, that humans always wants more “reward” and areadverse to loss. Businesspeople and CEOs are human too! (and here is where I think the conservatives, who think liberals are naive about human nature, are also themselves actually naive).
To maximize profits, humans will push the envelope as far as they can get away with, including making you lose money. In a competitive free enterprise economy, you could have paid less for a product, but a monopolist ensured that you paid more and lost money. The capitalist system also experiences other difficulties. As someone already pointed out, a deal between parties with significant unbalance of negotiation power by nature cannot be fair.
One recent effort by American corporations is to write a law allowing huge global companies with hoards of cash to lobby politicians with no restraint (we knpw politicians aren’t saints). Why do they need unrestrained power in politics? It’s because they cannot compete fairly in the market place against emerging companies. So they want to make sure they can corner and hedge the marketplace thru unfair laws. Small and young companies (including small businesses) normally do not have as much money as big global corporations to lobby politicians to write laws to their benefits.
Akira Morikawa 