Capitalism these days feels akin to joining a game of monopoly where everything has already been purchased. But feel free to have a jolly time going around the board and paying rent :)
Not exactly a critique of capitalism, but of private land ownership. The Landlord Game was created by a Georgist, and Georgists consider land and capital to be entirely different economic factors with entirely different behaviors. Marxists often consider Georgism to be capitalism's last gasp.
At least in capitalism you can start a new business. The folly of the Monopoly board game is the limited spaces which makes things a zero-sum game. The world is only zero-sum when the government doesn’t let you build new stuff through artificial constraints. In a free market always get new stuff.
I can't think of a single thing that isn't inherently limited. Maybe the sun is practically infinite, though you're certainly limited by the amount of power you can capture. Land, natural resources, time, it all has limits.
The quantity of steel may be inherently limited, but we can still make more than what we have now.
Land behaves differently because of the extremely in elastic supply. And it's not very fungible; a lot in the middle of Nevavda hundreds of miles from the nearest freeway is not exchangeable with the same size lot in Palo Alto.
And the limit itself is the amount of iron ore; that would be considered economic land, but the steel may just be considered capital.
Even without height restrictions, limited ownership of land still has the problems exhibited in the game.
Zoning and highly restrictive building codes were invented after Georgism, and are ways to further heighten the basic unfairness of land.
Local politics are dominated by landowners, as they tend to have the most control of, and greatest interest in controlling, the local levers of power.
It is ironically why I'm less concerned about private equity buying houses to rent than I am of local small time landlords buying houses. PE firms won't control local politicians in the same way that local landlords control politicians, because it's too much work and requires ridiculously intimidate knowledge of the local patronage networks.
Free market != capitalism, by the way. The market for the most part in "capitalist" America, has been captured.
Second, the world is a zero-sum game. In one breath folks will say "resources are limited, so we need to allocate to those who can use them best" or "life is unfair", and then in the next claim resources are unlimited and hard work is all you need, no need to get fussy about inequality.
