Capitalism creates competition, which can be good for consumers. But it also creates winners and losers, and some of those losers are insurmountably ruined while some winners have done so well that only a loss of huge proportions could ruin them. All others keep trying to be one of the latter party.
The augmenting aspect of it is something I definitely appreciate; the fact there are people with insurmountable losses isn't. Not so much because they actually exist (that is inevitable in a competition), but there are too many of them. Newcomers on whichever market need guidance and protection, or else they'll be quickly pushed out by the 'big guys' who get stronger everytime they'll do such a thing.
Another negative thing about it is that succes is too much dependant on short-term demands rather than actual improvement. This can be seen whenever a company brings out yet another product that was nearly similar to the original (most notably in the mobile phone industry) but also when one of those 'individual and original but too small'-companies have to shut down or are eaten by a bigger fish.
If it weren't for the various social laws that most of us in the western world have, these problems would even be greater. However, because of the conflict with the 'work hard enough and you can become a mogul'-principle these laws will not create the greatest amount of profit that we could get from competition. That's because governments are afraid to loose the succesful (=rich) partys of their society, as they're good for investments and tax income.
I guess, no hope, that's most of the politicians of today will see that investing in intelligence and necessary means for survival are far more important things than to invest in money above all things (and think about those other things later). Roughly speaking we are only using like a quarter of our potential, as the other part of the whole is too weak to participate in the competition due their own problems.
I realize that this world will never be Utopia and I've also said that some problems will prove to be insurmountable without drastic measures, but in the way that most people are utilising capitalism right now, we are holding ourselves down.
