Busting 3 common myths about free market capitalism | Johan Norberg | The Capitalist Manifesto

Are capitalists making profit at our expense?
Does free trade result in exploitation?
Get the facts from one of the leading liberal thinkers of our age, Johan Norberg, in his new book The Capitalist Manifesto.
Out June 2023: www.amazon.co.uk/Capitalist-M...

[@Vospader21]

Everything he’s saying only remains true as long as the market remains competitive. Eventually with capitalism you hit a point where a winner takes all and you have key industries dominated by a handful of major companies. Which is what we are currently seeing in our economy. The price of goods has gone up, and the quality is going down because producers and retailers who have fully cornered the market and deprived the consumer of alternatives can afford to start being lazy.

[@gratiamerancio9589]

🍀 promo sm

[@tomdron]

Ok, so the myths are:
1) Capitalism is for the rich
2) Corporations make obscene profits at the expense of us
3) Trade results in exploitation and a race to the bottom
For point one you argue that poverty is in decline and standards of living are rising. If this is true (despite one of the sources you cite in your book claiming that poverty is rising), I see no reason to attribute this to capitalism. You could perhaps make a case that free markets are the cause, but this is not synonymous with capitalism. The real reason capitalism is for the rich is your second 'myth'.
For myth 2, you say "In a free market, no deal is ever made unless both parties think they can benefit from it." The problem with this is that under capitalism, workers are not just making a deal with employers that is beneficial to them, they are being forced/coerced into make a deal that they need to make to survive. They have been deprived of the means of subsistence, and forced to do things they don't want to do to survive. To steal an analogy, imagine you are shipwrecked on an island with one other person, and before you awoke they took all the coconuts on the island, the only food source there is. They then say that they will only give you coconuts if you perform sexual favours. Sure, you both benefit from this deal, you get coconuts and the other gets sexual favours, but this is not a consensual or freely made deal.
But anyway, the main point you make in myth 2 is that "profits are not something they [corporations] take from others, it's the small share they get to keep of the value they create for others". What value do you think the shareholders of corporations are actually creating? The whole leftist critique of capitalism is that the workers themselves are creating the value. Like they are the ones physically creating products or providing services, i.e. value. All capitalists do is make profit from the labour of the workers. And this is in no way a "small" share. Why do you think billionaires exist? Why is the 1% a thing?
For myth 3, you argue that working conditions have been improving, and child labour is in decline. Improvement of working conditions are almost always due to strong labour movements fighting for more rules and regulations, not free-market capitalism. And funnily enough, the source you cite in your book for the decline of child labour actually states: "This report warns that global progress to end child labour has stalled for the first time in 20 years. The number of children aged 5 to 17 years in hazardous work - defined as work that is likely to harm their health, safety or morals - has risen by 6.5 million to 79 million since 2016."[1] Also the source you cite for the claim that "the richer countries get, the more they protect their environment", actually gives a very simple explanation for why richer countries have less of an environmental impact: they have transitioned to service economies[2], because most of the industrial production has now been moved to developing nations where labour is much cheaper since the workers are more exploited.
[1] data.unicef.org/resources/child-labour-2020-global-estimates-trends-and-the-road-forward/
[2] www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2211464522000434