Capitalism has failed. Capitalism is dead. Capitalism must be replaced.

These have all been refrains over the past week and really the past year, as we watched our lives and livelihoods upended by a pandemic and then the audacity of Reddit users playing God with failing stocks.

You see, GameStop, a company with a failing model of brick-and-mortar stores in malls that are largely shutdown by government fiat, was the subject of a big game of its own. Ironic in one sense, sad in another. The only difference is the game that was being played wasn’t on your big-screen TV, but in real life and it certainly had had real life consequences.

In one corner, it was small-time investors using apps like Robinhood or more traditional places like TD Ameritrade. In the other corner, it was Wall Street billionaires and Hedge Funds who were set to bet big on the failings of GameStop and other stocks.

By now, we all know how this story played out. The billionaires won, the little guy got screwed. A stock that went sky-high, came back down to earth, just in time for those billionaires and their short sales to get fulfilled. A group who made furious trades to raise said stock price, were relegated to only being able to sell the stock as it took said nose dive.

It was perhaps the worst example of the big guy sticking to the little guy that we’ve seen in the past decade. But, seriously, who do you think stood a chance though? It was never going to be the little guy. NEVER.

Regardless of what happened, what Terms of Service were or weren’t violated or what the truth of SEC regulations and guidelines were, something failed in a major way.

For many in the media and those on social media the answer to the question of “how could this happen?,” was that capitalism failed us once again. But, it just simply isn’t true.

It’s a lie that those who hold the power want us all to buy in to. It’s the same lie that we’ve been sold, and largely bought, for the last year. It’s the same contradictions we’ve all noticed and wondered aloud and in thought for the better part of a year now.

You know, things like:

• A wall at our Southern Border is bad, but one around our Capitol must be built.
• Target and Walmart can be full of hundreds of people, but that mom-and-pop store or restaurant must be limited.
• George Floyd’s funeral could be packed to the brim, but you likely didn’t get to say goodbye to that family member like you wanted to because only Floyd’s life had meaning beyond the grave or urn.
• Governors and politicians of all stripes can not wear face masks, but if you don’t, you’ll be fined.
• Indoor dining must be closed, but in order to keep your outdoor patio open for any sort of dining, you must enclose the space to keep it warm enough to serve food all in the name of keeping the virus from floating around in enclosed spaces and getting you sick.
• States got to make up whatever election laws they wanted to, regardless of the constitution, but if you dared to suggest you had constitutional rights to opening your business or church, the government would fine you.

None of those examples from all across society happen in a truly capitalistic society. They do happen when there is a perversion of capitalism, a perversion that looks and feels much like how an oligarchy would operate.

They do happen when tech giants set the laws and regulations of the industry in their favor and then crush the competition once it becomes just a bit too popular, ala Parler.

They do happen when massive Hedge Funds and investment firms populate the halls of government and make the rules that govern themselves and then get mad when people figured out their game and played it for themselves.

So, here we sit with a lot of questions and a whole lot of anger looking to be directed somewhere.

The media and elite from around the world want us to know that capitalism is where we should direct our anger and the answer is in a new economic system called “stakeholder capitalism.”

But, the real answer to it all? We aren’t living in an actual capitalistic society. We live in an Oligarchy, where the Wall Street elite, the corporate elite and the tech elite are all setting and rigging the rules of or economy and political life for their own benefit. Which means the answers that people, like those from the World Economic Forum, are coming up with aren’t even answering the right question.

So, what has been the real lesson over the past year or so here in America? It’s that individual risk-taking (like opening up a restaurant or tech start-up without massive hedge fund backing) will get you nowhere and that those who are tied in with the government will continue to rig the game in their favor.

An economy that doesn’t reward risk-taking, but instead rewards those that figure out how to get in bed best with the government isn’t a capitalist one anymore. It can’t be, it’s antithetical to the very ethos of capitalism and certainly free-market principles to say the least.

Real capitalism seeks as small of a relationship between government and the economic life of the society. Yet, we have heard all week from the World Economic Forum that the answer is actually more of the very thing that has us in this place in the first place.

Do you trust those that got us here or the rest of us to figure it out without government picking and choosing the winners going forward? That is the real question we must answer.