Do you think any of this is new? Do you think economist have not studied these systems for a long time? You can go back 100s of years and observe very similar p

Do you think any of this is new? Do you think economist have not studied these systems for a long time? You can go back 100s of years and observe very similar patterns. Even your own comment is not new. The complaint that there cooperation turn into feudalism is as old as capitalism. The problem is just that it never happens, 200 years of fantastic growth. Improvement on every human indicator possible in almost every dimension. Those are facts. These things became about because big and small cooperation compete within a framework of law to produce what consumers want. Yes, there are many bad laws and bad enforcement, but capitalism is the only system that has ever produced long term sustainable growth. I urge you to study governments and how accountable they really are to voters. I think nobody that has actually studied political economy and political science and uses the same view of human nature in both governments and markets, will think that government is the superior solution for the waste majority of problems. The problems inherent in government solving all these problems you would like to solve, are huge. There are knowledge problems, intensive problems, disagreements about what even should be done and more, the inability of independent action in multiple directions at the same time and the list continues. You complain about amazon, but 10 years ago, I remember that I usually had to pay lots of extra money for shipping. Now, I never do, not to mention that everything is cheaper and when I ship something it arrives faster. You can call if corporate feudalism all you want the benefits are clear. > powerful corporate oligarchy that is only accountable to shareholders. In the system I want and that we mostly have corporation are accountable to law, specifically civil law. Civil Law is the institutions we have that allows anybody to sue if his rights were violated. This is the central mechanism to limit cooperation, and it has worked millions of times in the past. Law is an emergent process and it evolves. My problem with many progressives like you seem to be is that you don't seem to have a appreciation for this mechanism. You just want a powerful top down bureaucracy that can monitors, controls and guides everything. This is costly, easily manipulated and dangerous to a far greater level then Amazon could ever be. Instead of a huge centralized environmental agency that has to be everywhere and monitor everything, we should have system where a person who feels his right are violated should be able to sue and attempts to enforce his rights. There need not be a clear definition from some agency what exactly the allowed level is, rather you have to prove harm to yourself and the court system has to produce some judgment call on what is acceptable in society. This is how Common Law was created, and economist who study it today, are fascinated by how it handles complex problem. Instead of ever increasing regulatory bureaucracy and every increasing size of the state to fix every problem we should recognize what a wonderful tool the legal system is and how we can evolve it in a better direction. This is how you create a market economy with efficient handling of conflicts. It will be dynamic and it will focus on problems people actually care about, rather then whatever the latest 'cause' is that some bureaucracy wants to fight'. One general system that is hard to manipulate and lobby rather then 100 specialized agencies each one deeply interdependent with the people the are supposed to regulate. Even worse if they actually solved the problems they have been assigned their would be no need for them to exist. Did the bureaucracy built up during the prohibition area vanish when prohibition ended? Laws that are no longer relevant cost almost nothing, bureaucracies that are no longer relevant will find some way to make themselves relevant. The puzzle is the same as was during the time of the founding fathers. How can you have a government that is both powerful and constraint. I think a different more acceptable solution has to be found then a call for ever greater ever more powerful government to constrain ever more powerful cooperation. I don't claim to have all the answers but when I hear 'a powerful government accountable to voters' and I remember basic political economy then I am afraid where those sort of calls lead. I think you are overestimating how bad capitalism is and you idealize democracy institutions. Some suggested fields of research for further study into the subject. Law&Economics, Public Choice Theory, Selectorate theory, New Institutional Economics, Industrial Organisation and more. Just so I recommend one concrete book I will recommend 'Choosing in Groups: Analytical Politics Revisited'. This book essentially show how incredibly difficult and complex collective action really is. A powerful government that is accountable to voters is easy in theory, but the practice is incredibly difficult.