Your Ticket to Capitalism Is Free.

This article gets down to the crux of capitalism, which is "consumer sovereignty."

I would add, that anyone who wants to complain about the "obscene" profits of sellers but never mentions the huge, and much greater, surplus that consumers get from the existence of said sellers, is in engaged in single-entry moral bookkeeping.

We benefit far more from the existence of a competitive economy than the competitors do. The primary beneficiaries of capitalism are not the capitalists, but the consumers.

"The reason groceries and other stores can’t charge a price anywhere close to the maximum you would pay is that groceries have to compete with each other. Walmart, in particular, is constantly trying to find ways to charge lower prices, not higher prices.

The consumer surplus that we derive from buying water, and other items, is enormous, almost incalculable. The fact that all of these products, services, and useful things are available to us at low prices seems automatic, nothing very interesting or important. In fact, the capitalist system operating in the background is performing miracles of production, logistics, and delivery, all to make sure that prices are low."

Hey @honeybee, that was a cute article you found. I find the topic of surplus (consumer and producer) comes up a lot. In order for trade to take place you need both the producers and consumers to be better off. More competition nearly always benefits consumers and sometimes even benefits producers.

Producers can compete through price or product differentiation. As a consumer you can benefit by having lower prices or more choice. Competition provides producers with incentive to improve their efficiency and/or quality or they will otherwise not survive. So competition can bring the best out of the strongest producers.

Another interesting thing about competition is that it can also facilitate cooperation. Cooperation often lowers cost which is also another big benefit to consumers.