Clearly, these assumptions were at odds with both common sense and the reality of market conditions. Under real competition, which is what capitalism delivered, companies are rivals for sales and profits. This rivalry leads them to innovate in product design and performance, to introduce cost-cutting technology, and to use packaging to make products more attractive or convenient for customers. Unbridled rivalry encourages companies to offer assurances of security to imperfectly informed consumers, by means such as money-back guarantees or product warranties and by building customer loyalty through investing in their brand names and reputations (see advertising, brand names, and consumer protection).
Capitalism: The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics | Library of Economics and Liberty - 0 views
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. Neither rivalry nor product differentiation occurs under perfect competition, but they happen constantly under real flesh-and-blood capitalism.
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Small-scale producers denounced these innovators as “robber barons,” accused them of monopolistic practices, and appealed to Congress for relief from relentless competition. Beginning with the Sherman Act (1890), Congress enacted antitrust laws that were often used to suppress cost cutting and price slashing, based on acceptance of the idea that an economy of numerous small-scale firms was superior to one dominated by a few large, highly efficient companies operating in national markets (see antitrust).
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capitalism Facts, information, pictures | Encyclopedia.com articles about capitalism - 0 views
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Yet capitalism cannot function if violence is too great or if it is continuous.
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There must be substantial pauses between wars and revolutions. Government must be able to prevent mob violence. The typical entrepreneur of early capitalism, unlike the feudal lord, was unwarlike by temperament and motivated by the search for profit. Bourgeois civilization, compared with the forms of social organization that preceded it or with the totalitarian forms that now compete with it, has remained inherently peaceable, rationalistic, and materialistic.
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The enforcement of commercial contracts by the state and the extension and protection of property rights—all essential to the development of capitalism—required a strong government. The process of saving, investment, risk-taking, and profit-making flourished best, however, when the powers of the state were restricted so that their exercise would not be arbitrary
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