Exactly. I value commerce and I think people have a right to open a business. People misconstrue neoliberalism with political liberalism and they're not necessarily the same thing. People hear the similarity in how the words sound and refrain from educating themselves. Neoliberalism could be described as liberty (liberalism) for the big fish, but not for the smaller fish. It's the liberty to cut wages, curb unions, and do what you want to make an extra buck even if it's unethical or unfair. It has become the systematic norm, and it's part of the reason why people live in misery. That's part of the reason why wages have been stagnate for decades, unions barely even exist anymore. Unions were what allowed people to demand better treatment, fairer wages, and basic human dignity. That concept has become completely foreign to us now. Neoliberals see non-slave wages as a burden, and think that there shouldn't be regulation that interferes with that, so that they can employ workhorses for pennies instead of dollars, while one bedroom apartment rent prices double, triple, or quadruple in the metropolitan area within a small period of years.
The irony is that the "free market" is not necessarily free if you have people curtailing the freedom of others to participate in the market.
The small fish is in its own lane, doing its own thing. Sometimes people go to the small fish for Pepsi. Sometimes people go to the big fish for Pepsi. They both have their qualities and differences that make them appealing to the customer. They're competitors, but they both have a right to exist. If you're a big fish, that's fine. You can be a big fish. But don't be unethical. Some may flout this "idealism" of mine for even mentioning the word "unethical". Why are we here? We're here for ourselves, but also each other.
Imagine you want to open local supermarket to sell Pepsi. You have to buy Pepsi at an exorbitant price from your supplier compared to this big massive grocery store chain. Why is this? The big fish's skullduggery, that's why. They want to be the only ones selling Pepsi for a cheap price, and they found intricate ways to force their Pepsi supplier to sell Pepsi cheaply, but only to them. If the small fish wants to sell Pepsi, they have to buy the Pepsi at an exorbitant price, and thus they have to charge their customers more in order to see any profit from that. That makes them lose business, since customers don't wan to overpay for Pepsi.
That's not fair. Some people think that the big fish should be "unregulated" and allowed to bully, coerce, or bribe their supplier for an unfair competitive advantage. Others see that as unfair and unlawful. It's achieved through either predatory price hedges, along with other methods to command the buying power to get the lowest price. Both the Big fish and sometimes the supplier (who is sometimes complicit) retaliate by raising wholesale costs and cutting promotions to those smaller stores, forcing the small fish to raise their retail prices. If it were one product? Fine. But unfortunately, Big Fishes have done this with a huge amount of products on the market. That's not okay. It's also another reason why groceries have been so overpriced. The price rigging contributed to food inflation. The hiked wholesale prices or reduced discounts for non-big Fish shouldn't be allowed.
So people have a right to engage in commerce. What people should not have a right to do are things like bullying or monopolizing suppliers into charging your competitors more for the same products, while you buy your product cheaply, so that customers come to you, and not your competitors, giving you an unfair competitive advantage. That has been a problem for small grocery store owners in America. They have not been able to buy Pepsi cheaply from their supplier, because one particular mega-grocery store chain has bullied the supplier into only charging THEM cheap prices for Pepsi, while all the other small grocery stores have to pay more for Pepsi, which means that they have to charge more to sell Pepsi in their grocery store, which discourages customers from buying from them. It's a calculated ploy on part of the big grocery store chain to say "LOOK guys, You can buy Pepsi cheap from me" and therefore customers flock to the big grocery store instead of the small grocery store. That is not right. It shouldn't be allowed.
People should not be forced to lose their livelihoods over injustices like that. People romanticize this idea of "cheating" when it comes to unregulated capitalism until they're the ones on the receiving end of it when they want to open up their own business. Before, they were idolizing the privileged nepotistic beginnings of those born into the big fish family tree, thinking that the small fish should stop whining about unfairness in the market. They want to go, contribute, and participate just to find the exorbitant expenses burdening them.
Some would see measures against that as "government intervention" and think that such matters should be entirely unregulated. I don't. I think you can participate in the market, but you should not be aloud to bully, coerce, and cheat while blocking other people from participating in the market. The regulation that prevents that is not "heavy" government intervention, it's fair intervention. When the law exists, it exists to advocate for humanity and the people. That's why it's there. Without that, you render everything a grim corporatist plutocracy.
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