By construction a market that doesn’t work well is suffering from a market failure: monopoly, duopoly, governmental capture, important people’s kids promoted beyond their abilities.

Capitalism has a bad name because we tolerate not only market failures but induced market failures: the first thing anyone seems to do after winning in a market is to try to construct barriers to further competition. No Soviet career party man, no apparatchik is such a fan of knowing the right people as the capitalist who won a hand of poker.

The tech business is addicted to this shit: a software venture isn’t truly considered a success until it’s a monopoly, entrepreneurs avoid markets with established players in them.

But this is because of the funding model. The people who fund software plays have convinced LPs that they can beat the market by a lot, and over the long run it’s not many people who can do that without cheating.

So everyone cheats and tries for market manipulation that is illegal on paper. We used to prosecute those people for securities fraud.