I think this meme fundamentally misidentifies the problem. People keep attributing every societal issue to “capitalism,” when many of the things they’re describing have very little to do with capitalism itself.

To be clear, I have plenty of criticisms of capitalism as an economic philosophy. Left unchecked, it incentivizes wealth concentration, externalizes costs, and often places profit ahead of broader societal well-being. There are legitimate reasons to criticize capitalism, and I don’t particularly admire many of its outcomes.

My issue is with the inconsistency in this meme. The behaviors it’s describing, pathological greed, regulatory capture, monopolistic behavior, and the relentless pursuit of short-term shareholder profits, are better described as corporatocracy than capitalism itself. That’s a system where large corporations wield enormous influence over government and markets, insulating themselves from competition and shaping policy to serve their own interests.

If you want to criticize corporatocracy, I’m right there with you. But treating every economic or social problem as though it’s simply “capitalism” is an oversimplification. Distinctions matter, especially when you’re trying to identify the actual root cause of a problem. If we’re going to criticize a system, we should at least be criticizing the correct one.