The Reaction

Most of enterprise is encapsulated into what the socialist fearmongers might recognize as patterns of cooperation.

What is actively ignored is that the main operative construct in the long recognized pattern of "Perfect Competition" is NOT the competition, but the side problem of transaction costs. It is purported to work when there are low to zero transaction costs. Those transaction costs, notably information costs, are the main focus of policy controllers of manipulation and control, and the "competition", really just cooperation in various grades and qualities, is advertised but actively not addressed, because if you did, everyone would realize that the very inequality that the wealthy try to maintain is the main aspect that degenerates the pattern. This is NOT to say that some bogey man word like "communism" is the answer to our problems. It IS to say that wealth inequality IS the very malignancy we suffer and actively ignore, and lying to each other is the very malignnacy we tout as virtue, when in fact it harms all of us, the rich so they cannot safely walk down the street, and the poor so they life on the street, while the rest have to deal with the artificially generated problems of those streets.