capitalism is kinda-sorta weaponized greed, but in a way that tries to promote competition and thus create actual value. IMHO blaming regulators for not nudging capital in the politically desirable way is appropriate: either they shouldn't be regulating because they don't know how, or they're regulating according to a hidden policy instead of whatever they say. (cue 'why not both'.)
There is no need for hedging language, it is entirely weaponized greed.
> but in a way that tries to promote competition and thus create actual value.
No, its in a way which tries to remove constraints from the power of the capitalist class, and full enable their dominion over society -- that's what drove it and how it evolved from prior systems.
The assumed existence of competition (along with other assumptions) making it optimal was a much later, after the fact attempt at rationalizing it in response to criticism, and actual attempts to promote competition were later yet reforms limiting capitalism, not part of its essence.
> capitalism is kinda-sorta weaponized greed, but in a way that tries to promote competition and thus create actual value.
In practice, capitalism itself doesn't really promote competition, but rather competition is an externally-enforced situation required to keep capitalism from going off the rails. IMHO, capitalism naturally evolves towards monopoly (otherwise antitrust laws would be unnecessary).
Why did we decide that return on capital investment is the metric to optimize for, at the expense of everything else?