it's not about their money. Money is the power to choose. In a very real sense, the profit extracted by enterprises represents opportunities lost by their customers. Had profit generating goods and services been priced at the market clearing, efficient level then the end customers would have kept some of their own money. They could then make new choices with that money. In aggregate on the supplier side, that reaped profit represents choices individuals could have made but now are unable to do so.
You are committing a major logical fallacy here, in assuming the initiative and use of capital to create products and then choosing to extract profits after taking that risk are independent events. Profitable goods often will not exist at all unless they are profitable. (Consider in an extreme example, pharmecuticals.)
You are also mixing up margin and market clearing price. The market clearing price includes profit. Just because a product is profitable that doesn't mean there are any inefficiencies in the market. On the contrary the price a market will bear for a product prices in profit insofar as there is a lack of supply to meet demand. Market inefficiencies come about due to illiquidity, regulation, abusive monopolies, etc, not simply because someone is making a profit.
You can't just imagine up a world where enterprises sell with zero margin -- in many cases the alternative is the products just simply wouldn't exist. This alternative reality is much worse for consumers.
Understand, but that's not exactly what I'm arguing here. Pharmaceuticals definitely need big pocket books to finance medical research. But market forces alone are clearly not the answer for even that market. There are many illnesses not profitable enough to warrant medical research - and people suffer and die as a consequence. In effect, then, the profits pharmaceuticals make on one medication are really then coverage for later costs. That makes them not profit anymore.
I'm not saying the world needs 0 margins. If anything, that's contributing to the problem. Walmart and Amazon are good examples. Their cost structures have annihilatd entire, local economies.
My Sunday morning guess would be to look for ways to lower the entry costs for businesses. Maybe municipal level infrastructure for local consumers? I don't think "trust busting" would work in isolation. Over time, the markets probably re-concentrate.
You cite Amazon and Walmart as bad actors since they have 'annihilated local economies' -- but at the same time, they have delivered untold amounts of value by lowering prices to nearly (or below) cost for millions of consumer goods. Not to mention the time they have freed up from peoples' lives having to spend time purchasing items at various brick and mortar stores. Would it really be better if mom and pop stores were selling the same products at higher costs, wasting immense resources in the process (subsidized by consumers and possibly tax payers) due to lack of efficiency and scale?
How do you speak so confidently that they are "contributing to the problem?" It is a hard sell that they are abusing their market dominance, because of the very fact their margins are so thin. Since there are multiple market leaders, and their margins are thin, this implies they are competing fairly. You seem to take it as a given but it's a hugely complex question. I'm all for trust busting large companies abusing their power -- abuse which usually manifests in large margins.
OK. So if it's not about justice broadly but about economic liberty specifically, that's fine. Then the conversation is about which economic liberties are due and how much those would cost.
A popular one is "People shouldn't have to lose wealth or gain debt because of health problems". That's an admirable goal, but taking all the money from the top 1% won't result in free universal health insurance for long. That approach still seems like it's reaching for something else.
You seem to be making a more upstream argument, though. That U.S. (and Western?) markets are structured to favor the wealthy, limiting the power of markets to reward the poor and working class for good choices, hard work, and so on. That's a great point to consider, but what approach would create a level playing field?
