There are already 'everything apps' in the 'western liberal democratic world'. They're just broken up into entities controlled by what are essentially holding companies - Meta/Facebook/Instagram/WhatsApp, Microsoft/Github/LinkedIn, etc. Go another level up and you find that all these corporations are tied together by a very similar set of majority shareholders (Blackrock/StateStreet/Fidelity) who also have their fingers in everything from fossil fuels to military procurement to pharmaceuticals and internet/phone providers.
The only real difference with China is that there, the state actors sit at a higher real-power level than the corporate actors, while the situation is essentially reversed in the USA, with politicians and bureaucrats being little more than mid-level managers in the corporate hierarchy.
As far as the claim that Monopoly, the board game, is often held up as a demonstration of capitalism, the word unregulated should be inserted.
Here's a game (I call it Risk-Opoly) that would demonstrate how capitalism actually worked in Europe right before World War One: take a half-dozen Monopoly boards, each representing an individual country/region, and let each game proceed until a clear winner on each board became apparent. Then that winner can buy machine guns, tanks, fuel, artillery, shells, ships and soldiers to attack the other boards. This of course is not the only way Empire-scale wars break out, but I think it matches European/American/Japanese/Russian industrial-era history pretty closely.
> The only real difference with China is that there, the state actors sit at a higher real-power level than the corporate actors,
And China has it right here. It's as important for corporations and the wealthy not to be above the law as it is to have civilian control of the military.
Are you saying the Western corporatocratic model is going all that much better for... I was going to say, its citizens, but given that you seem to be championing the economics-over-politics perspective, for its consumerist-cattle-slash-proletariat?
The main (or only?) difference seems to be that our Masters are capitalist robber barons in stead of their communist political apparatchik ones. Yi-fucking-ppie.
The only problems I have ever had with "capitalist robber barons" is minor customer service issues, and I can say whatever I want about them without fear of consequences.
> The only problems I have ever had with "capitalist robber barons"...
So you're not a wage slave like most of the rest of us? Or a small entrepreneur, i.e to them a minor irrelevancy? Unless you're one of them yourself, even though you may not have any direct "problem" with them, you still live in a world ruled by their whims. That may not be a problem that you notice, but it is one all the same.
> I can say whatever I want about them without fear of consequences.
Yeah, sure, we can do that. But you know who has even less fear of the consequences of what we say? The capitalist robber barons, that's who. Our being allowed to vent any excess steam is just a safety valve for them.
The only real difference with China is that there, the state actors sit at a higher real-power level than the corporate actors, while the situation is essentially reversed in the USA, with politicians and bureaucrats being little more than mid-level managers in the corporate hierarchy.
As far as the claim that Monopoly, the board game, is often held up as a demonstration of capitalism, the word unregulated should be inserted.
Here's a game (I call it Risk-Opoly) that would demonstrate how capitalism actually worked in Europe right before World War One: take a half-dozen Monopoly boards, each representing an individual country/region, and let each game proceed until a clear winner on each board became apparent. Then that winner can buy machine guns, tanks, fuel, artillery, shells, ships and soldiers to attack the other boards. This of course is not the only way Empire-scale wars break out, but I think it matches European/American/Japanese/Russian industrial-era history pretty closely.