"Capitalism is not about free competitive choices among people who are reasonably equal in their buying and selling of economic power, it is about concentrating capital, concentrating economic power in very few hands using that power to trash everyone who gets in their way"
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Korten isn’t critiquing capitalism as a neutral system that occasionally misbehaves; he’s rejecting the PR version of it. The line is built around a bait-and-switch: you’re invited to picture the textbook fantasy of “free competitive choices” among “reasonably equal” actors, then he pulls the floor out from under that premise. By front-loading the conditional - capitalism would be defensible if power were evenly distributed - he frames inequality not as a bug but as the operating system.
The repetition of “concentrating” is the engine here. It’s not lyrical; it’s prosecutorial, like a closing argument that wants the jury to hear inevitability in the rhythm. “Economic power” gets treated less like money and more like force, something you can wield. That sets up the deliberately abrasive payoff: “trash everyone who gets in their way.” It’s slangy on purpose, collapsing boardroom decisions and policy fights into a street-level image of domination. The subtext is moral, not merely analytical: if the system’s trajectory is toward monopoly and capture, then appeals to fair play are not naive, they’re enabling.
Context matters: Korten comes out of a late-20th/early-21st century activist critique shaped by deregulation, corporate consolidation, and the revolving door between business and government. His target isn’t the small entrepreneur mythos; it’s the mature, financialized economy where “choice” often means choosing between brands owned by the same handful of firms, and where political rules get written by those with the most capital at stake. The intent is to strip capitalism of its innocence and recast it as a power story.
The repetition of “concentrating” is the engine here. It’s not lyrical; it’s prosecutorial, like a closing argument that wants the jury to hear inevitability in the rhythm. “Economic power” gets treated less like money and more like force, something you can wield. That sets up the deliberately abrasive payoff: “trash everyone who gets in their way.” It’s slangy on purpose, collapsing boardroom decisions and policy fights into a street-level image of domination. The subtext is moral, not merely analytical: if the system’s trajectory is toward monopoly and capture, then appeals to fair play are not naive, they’re enabling.
Context matters: Korten comes out of a late-20th/early-21st century activist critique shaped by deregulation, corporate consolidation, and the revolving door between business and government. His target isn’t the small entrepreneur mythos; it’s the mature, financialized economy where “choice” often means choosing between brands owned by the same handful of firms, and where political rules get written by those with the most capital at stake. The intent is to strip capitalism of its innocence and recast it as a power story.
Quote Details
| Topic | Justice |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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