Judging by alot of the posts I have seen here there seems to be a great deal of confusion as to what capitalism is on here but that is hardly surprising as most of the general public has the same misconceptions. Corporations hoping into bed with government and getting kickbacks, bailouts, subsidies and other corporate welfare has absolutely nothing to do with capitalism and everything to do with Corporatism aka "crony capitalism" which can best be described as a form of corporatized socialism where the gains are privately owned but the losses are socialized because the big boys are "too big to fail".

 

Naturally it is within the best interests of these corrupt corporations and their puppets in congress and the white house to keep this lie going, so the free market is blamed by the democrats and they become the supposed champions of the average working stiff while the republicans pretend to embrace the free market and pose the roll of the financially responsible adults. How we got into this situation in the first place is by too much government regulation, contrary to popular misconception big corporations love regulations because it allows them to use the heavy hand of government to legislate their competition out of business which creates a cartel like system where the companies with the best lobbyists and the sleaziest most underhanded tactics comes out the winner while the businesses that only want to provide and honest product or service get screwed.

 

Think about it, without government interference with the exceptions of course of enforcing laws against against force and fraud and the enforcement of contracts these corporations would not be able to cheat the system as they would have no choice but to succeed or fail on a level playing field based on their own merits where they know that anyone could enter into the market at any time and put them out of business which forces them to keep costs down, keep their customers happy and be at least somewhat ethical in their dealings. And as Evilshy pointed out in his post, governments have virtually little to no incentive to keep costs down because they can forcibly take money from taxpayers and even print money out of thin air through a fiat currency/central banking system which encourages inflation/debt which lowers the value of the dollar which harms the poor and middle class most of all by reducing their purchasing power.

 

A corporation on the other hand unless it is in bed with the government has to spend its money wisely and convince investors to buy stock in their company and customers to buy whatever product or service they are selling.

Source: Debate time Capitalism vs Socialism!