[CharlesColeman]

> So "modern capitalism is not a system that will magically fulfill customer needs in the absence of competition".

But modern capitalism, at least in the American context, is a system being drained of competition. Competitors conspire to destroy it by merging and acquiring each other, and the deregulatory economic zeitgeist that's been in force for 40 years means the government has done little to foster it.

Markets tend towards equilibrium, and bitter competition is a kind of disequilibrium.

[AnimalMuppet]

> But modern capitalism, at least in the American context, is a system being drained of competition.

I agree, and I agree that it's a problem. But it's the "being drained of competition" that's the problem, not capitalism itself. (Well, capitalism itself is something that would prefer to drain itself of competition - even Adam Smith knew that - but for capitalism to work properly, there has to be competition.)

There seem to be two kinds of "draining of competition". First, there's the "just too good" kind. Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and (the subject at hand) John Deere may all be of this kind (though Microsoft did plenty of dirty tricks to get there). Economics of scale and network effects create positive feedback loops where one competitor can win it all. I don't really know what to do about that.

The second kind is government-caused (or at least -allowed) monopoly. There's only one electric company here, because the government thought it made sense for there to be. Some other monopolies are less directly government caused, but heavy regulations can make it so that only the largest firms have the resources to comply, and all the smaller firms die.

Government-allowed is when the government approves a merger of firms that are big enough that the merger significantly decreases (or eliminates) competition.

With the government we've had for the last 40 years, I don't know what to do about this kind, either.