> I find it interesting this sort of thing is rarely, if ever, presented as government gone wrong. I don't think this is true. It's named as government corrupt

> I find it interesting this sort of thing is rarely, if ever, presented as government gone wrong. I don't think this is true. It's named as government corruption often enough, and it's framed from that direction fairly frequently in some political media, both by people who believe it's a corruption of what government should/could be and who believe it's inherent in government power. > When someone steals, commits extortion, etc., no one considers it an "example of capitalism" This seems truer than your first contention -- not only is it generally rare that crime is considered just another response to incentives, even people who think of it this way (myself and probably some economists included), it's fair enough to draw a line between a formal definition of capitalism and crime. But then again, in this kind of discussion it's probably worth recognizing that terms like "capitalism" (or "socialism", for that matter) are usually used as shorthand in a heavily context-dependent sense, rather than as anything formally defined. I think it's better to be more precise so as to avoid hang-ups like this, but then again, being prescriptive or pedantic can have it's own hangups. Capitalism may not simply mean any laissez faire system founded largely on self-interest, but it's easy enough to accept it as a label for a class of possible systems for the sake of discussion about whether or not it's unfair to blame a private party for capture of a democratic/republic nation-state, or whether to blame the state for being there to capture.