Do you mean people trading with others on a voluntary, win-win basis, or do you mean what today is labeled capitalism but is characterized by coercive force and cronyism?
> or do you mean what today is labeled capitalism but is characterized by coercive force and cronyism?
That's what has always been labeled capitalism, starting with the socialist critiques of the dominant system (filled, as it was, with coercive force and cronyism) in the developed world in the mid-to-late 19th century who invented the term "capitalism" as a label for that system.
Outside of incoherent, fantasies the neither exist in the real world or stand up to much examination even in theory -- fantasies constructed largely as a propaganda to defend that coercive, cronyistic system from its critics -- nothing else but coercive, cronyism-dominated systems has ever been referred to with the label "capitalism".
Only in the corporate welfare system we have today (see Chevrolet bailout). Without corporate welfare in the forms of subsidies, bailouts, and regulations, companies like Telsa would be destroying the major auto manufactures. What old major companies would still be around without un-capitlistic like interventions from the government?
No, it was true for East India, it was true for Standard Oil, and it's still true today. Much of regulation was intended for the protection of consumers, not to cement incumbents, and the subversion of the same is evidence of capitalism's predatory nature.
Businesses continue their regulatory capture in the US. The line between corporations and government grows thinner every time a burdensome regulation is created that only companies with significant resources can follow.
