Markets are cooperation.

The competition people in a market face is for reaching an agreement to cooperate with another.

Yes, there are problems in the economic systems we have today, but they’re not market forces. Neoliberalism is not a cause of income inequality or a poor African continent.

There are specific policies and systems that cause the problems. The ‘ism’ that ‘people will be better off when individuals have authority over their own lives — not other’s’ is not a cause of poverty. It is behind the many many changes to policies and systems of the past that led to a massive decrease in devastating poverty world-wide.

Now, artificially-low interest rates is not a fundamental factor of Neoliberalism. However, if you want to see one way wealth is siphoned from the many at the bottom to the few at the top, look here.

I would also agree, if this is what you suggest in the comment ‘pitting them one against the other’, that a lot of recent attempts at creating new business models online are a waste of energy and a drag on the economy in general even though the people involved are collecting a lot of money.

But the premise that ‘competing and not collaborating’ is off-track when you’re talking about markets. Even in boxing, both fighters agree on the rules and follow them — that’s collaboration. Can you imagine marriage without competition in the dating pool?