> And during the gilded era. The big-time capitalists of that period were not people who made money in free market competition. They were people with inherited

> And during the gilded era. The big-time capitalists of that period were not people who made money in free market competition. They were people with inherited wealth who got beaten in free market competition by others with less inherited wealth... Agreed, and that is in my opinion when entrenched Wealth was established to oppose the very notion of the US narrative about free enterprise. I think free commerce was possible when the US was a frontier, and even that has caveats, because Abraham Lincoln's relative was able to hi-jack California into the Union after the Bear Flag Revolution in Sonoma [1], won without any bloodshed by 30 something Frontiersmen after they removed a Mexican Governor and later made Pio Pico a politician in the New Republic to surrender without violence. And I think it was also found in the Gold Rush thereafter. This was critical for the emerging Economy in CA that would eventually make it the 8th Largest Economy in the World. > In other words, "capitalism" and "free market" are not synonyms, though capitalists love it when everybody else thinks they are. I'm open to this idea, but how can you achieve this without mal-investment, and destruction of resources found in all other antithetical forms of Economic systems: I've lived and worked with Anarcho-Communists/Marxists/Socialists and I (Anarcho-Capitalist) was always the defining variable in our collective projects succeeding because they often reverted to endeavors that lost our operating Capital. I'd get us to a certain benchmark and then we'd be able to procure services and goods to get us to the next phase only to run out of money half way because they felt it best to spend on 'feel good' gestures to appease their concerns rather than have a merit-based system where compensation came from ROI on labour and judged on an empirical individual basis. I took pay hits, as in not paid at all and had to pay my own way for most of the entire time and I worked for free because I was so driven to make it happen, because they felt the need to take the money (they erroneously felt entitled to as funds ere held in common ownership) that I often earned on risky business ventures to offset the expenses/losses we incurred from things like printing useless propaganda and paying people for 'raising awareness' in the most useless demos imaginable. My real mistake was to be so stubborn to my openness to collaborations with anyone who wanted achieve the same goal(s), regardless of ideology; in retrospect I'm glad I did these projects but I'm sure I had shortened my Lifespan having done these things on several occasions. I can go on, but you get my point. But my question remains: outside of the Capitalism, as in non State-Sanctioned Central Bank based cronyism, how do you achieve this? 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Republic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Republic