World integrated capitalism i.e. “global capitalism” is far from the original meaning of capitalism under a classical laisse-faire approach. What we have today is closer to fascism than anything else. The power of money is such that it can subvert most human beings and most human systems if allowed to, hence why capitalism (economic systems placing the emphasis and value on capital itself, capital-ism) requires safeguards against this.
Separation of economy and state would be one safeguard meant to ensure that money doesn’t corrupt politics and allow the rich to buy the government for themselves – which has unfortunately already occurred.
Strong laws against fraud and theft would be another safeguard meant to ensure reliable transactions and to counter-balance against the possibility that someone with more money than you may be able to use that extra money to take advantage of transactions in such a way as to commit fraud or theft against you and get away with it. Since the rich have bought out the government and this includes most of the courts, we no longer have a justice system but rather an injustice system, so this safeguard is also largely absent.
Still another safeguard would be anti-trust law, to prevent companies from becoming so massive that they effectively control entire markets on their own and are able to find ways to subvert existing legislation and other safeguards by sheer brute force of the massive amounts of capital they wield. This also helps ensure competition in markets by keeping entry costs down and preventing a single person or company from buying up all the steps in a supply chain and locking out possible competitors. But since we never enforce anti-trust law this safeguard is also missing.
Another safeguard would be strong limits on inheritance, since by allowing unlimited inheritance to transfer from parents to child this effectively breaks the system of fair competition by creating unfair starting conditions. If you have a race and one person gets to start 10 feet from the finish line while you have to start a mile away from the finish line, guess who is going to win? Not a fair race. Meritocracy is a valuable economic goal and requires the existence of fair competition as much as is reasonably possible (as much as is possible without creating more overall problems). Limiting inheritance to something meaningful but not huge would be an important step, but of course this doesn’t happen. Capital is allowed to pool in certain families across generations and create dynasties, which contributes to the decline of capitalism into fascism.
Still one more safeguard would be an overall freedom in markets, allowing people to keep as much of their earned money as possible and allowing them to voluntarily transact with each other as freely as possible. This would require an approach of minimizing laws, taxes and regulations to only those most needed, recognizing that an onerous and over-burdened legal, tax and regulatory requirement acts as a severe weight on the economy and on individual people, inhibiting them from climbing the economic ladder. Also would come with an understanding of the fact that overly generous welfare systems are bad for skewing the economy away from producers and toward net consumers, creating moral hazards along with a drag on the economy felt by ordinary working people and leading to a higher tax burden, which has the secondary effect of growing government over time. But of course, just like the other safeguards mentioned here, this is also not in place.
What exists might be called capitalism because it values capital above all else. It’s a distorted, corrupt system that enriches the already rich, limits everyone else and ends up creating economic serfdoms and much worse through the unholy union of government and big business. At this point they can do pretty much whatever they want, with the amount of capital they have and their near-total control over governments and the new technological toys they have for controlling us and keeping us in line. Oh sure, they allow small marginals of resistance and escape in order to relieve pressure from the overall system and give the impression that somehow they aren’t in absolute control. What could break this control would be 1) a global war so devastating it kills most of the elites and things are reset at the local levels of real humans, 2) asteroid impact or solar flare knocking out electricity or frying technology, wiping out currencies and causing us to go back to a more medieval society, or 3) strong sentient AI appears and cleans house. Neither of these options are probably very likely, but it’s good to know there is at least some hope.
