A major goal of policy is to set incentives to which people optimize. The "capitalist soul sucking robber barons" are doing exactly what the incentives we set

A major goal of policy is to set incentives to which people optimize. The "capitalist soul sucking robber barons" are doing exactly what the incentives we set up push for. If they didn't, boards of directors / shareholders would vote them out. And if those didn't, competing businesses would crush them. No one has any real choice; it's the free hand of the market. There are nice books about this (Dictator's Handbook comes to mind). Many would prefer to be less exploitative personally, but need legal frameworks to be able to do so. And indeed, in history, you often saw the "capitalist soul sucking robber barons" see the harms they were causing and push for that regulation. Most people would prefer to provide safe food, safe medicine, etc. than sell poison and snakeoil. But you can't really resist market forces. So you need to work to set up socially-constructive market forces. And it's all better than serfdom and 1500-era systems regardless.