Driving prices to 0 is not incentivized at all, in fact quite the opposite. The current system incentivizes driving prices as high as humanly possible in order

Driving prices to 0 is not incentivized at all, in fact quite the opposite. The current system incentivizes driving prices as high as humanly possible in order to allow the investors to take get as much of a return as they can. That's part of what's driving inflation. And that's what inevitably happens when sectors consolidate towards monopoly or small enough oligopolies where company's convergent interests can align and they start competing on things other than price. This is part of what we see driving current inflation. There's a lot of talk about how the labor market is driving inflation, or pandemic shocks are, and both of those are true. But corporate profits are still at record highs and rising. If supply shocks and labor prices were truly the main driver, then corporate profits should be near zero. They're not. Companies are taking advantage of the fact that inflation is already going up and that they have convenient scapegoats to raise their prices far more than they need to in order to cover labor increases or increase supply. There are reports of executives bragging about this to their boards. [1] Edit: To follow up, these ideas that the Capitalist free market system and competition incentivize innovation aren't actually founded in empirical research of any kind. It's pure theorizing and it's theorizing based on a house of cards of bad assumptions. One can zoom out and look at history and see that the standard of living for people has steadily increased, and humans have steadily innovated. But there's no empirical evidence to support the idea that it's a capitalist free market driving those advances. Yes they advanced further in free societies, most of which have up until now employed some version of a Capitalist free market linked to more or less social democracy. But you could just as readily theorize that those advances are just down to an innate desire in people to make the world a better place for everyone, an innate desire to innovate. And that authoritarian societies squash their opportunities to do so, while freer societies leave enough opportunities open that they enable them. But they don't necessarily add incentives for that innovation in addition to the innate incentives. [1]https://www.businessinsider.com/big-companies-keep-bragging-to-investors-about-price-hikes-2021-11 https://www.businessinsider.com/big-companies-keep-bragging-...