> The absolute quality of life over the last century across capitalist nations has continued to explode across all societal strata. 1. I think that's true on a

> The absolute quality of life over the last century across capitalist nations has continued to explode across all societal strata. 1. I think that's true on average and probably true on the median, but it's unclear that's true for everyone. There are a lot of anecdotal stories of people working at a gas station to pay for college or even postgraduate school ~50 years ago, no loans or anything. That's just not possible today. I would bet that in terms of net worth, ~50 years ago the lowest class in the US was at least positive and is definitely not positive today. 2. In any case that's not what the author means by capitalism not working. The claim is not that quality of life has gone up, it's that the market is not operating in the way that advocates of capitalism say that it should. Perhaps you want to argue that oligopolies and regulatory capture and barriers to entry in new markets are morally good because they have had the empirical result of reducing Great Depression-style starvation. I think that's a coherent argument to make. (I'd ask some questions about how the leadup to the Great Depression involved oligopolies and regulatory capture and barriers to entry, but I imagine you could come up with convincing rebuttals.) But then you / the people who believe like you need to start selling capitalism as not free markets because that produces moral good, but as highly regulated and government-intervened markets that are centrally planned in a way that reduces suffering and quality of life and is therefore morally good. If you want to argue that the author's depiction of "capitalism" is a straw man and in fact capitalism is winning by killing needless competition, that's fine - just start saying it.