Both. It's kind of like asking if monarchy is the problem or if the problem is just evil kings. Theoretically even a dictatorship can work out well for the people given a benevolent dictator. The issue is with the vulnerabilities inherent in the system. For capitalism, it's that those with more money have more influence and thus it creates a feedback loop where those with more money have more power to get themselves more money and therefore more power and so on.

Some people are always looking for a free ride. Amassing power/influence/status/assets is usually a way to do that - basically get others to do the hard work and take 5/10/50% of the credit. This appllies under all systems due, most probably, to the natural diversity of humans.

The job of the "system" (legal, political, economic, even cultural and religious) is to mitigate excesses and especially abuses of power before it comes to extremes of bloodshed; but as those also sometimes concentrate power, they themselves need something to regulate the systemic abuses or the non-sytemic abuses of empowered officials.

Humans are the problem, some of them. But greed is also motivational (and sloth), so you can't get rid of it entirely.

If you can keep your society smal enough that basically everyone knows what most other people are up to, it doesn't take much regulation, beyond trust and reputation. But as if your society grows to where some people are effectively faceless and unknown, then it becomes more problematic.

I think people are being extraordinarily polite for something that was clearly debatelord bait.

There can be more than one problem.

Capitalism is the private ownership of the means of production (there is a less marxist term about top level economic property I'm totally spacing on here so take some Marx and quit yer complaining, it's the same thing) and has nothing to do with merit.

That has always been capitalist propaganda. The ability to participate in capital has nothing to do with merit.

I earn more than most medical doctors in my home country. They save lives, while I write software that could disappear tomorrow and no chaos would ensue. But I do earn my employers more money than the doctor does.

The only world in which this is right is a world where you only care about yourself and being rich. Meritocracy is inherently subjective and depends largely of what you value to give people merit, and in a lot of cases that's "we fucked over two dozen tiny companies with patent troll lawsuits and made millions".

Capitalism is a problem… along with a shitload of other problems.

Capitalism is designed to give power to the few at the top. Nothing about it is a meritocracy, its a funnel of money straight to whoever can exploit the system more than the rest. Has nothing to do with merit, but to "get yours" through whatever means necessary, including crushing those employees who actually do the hard labor that they then extract wealth from.

Nepotism obviously existed before capitalism, and it will surely exist at some level in the next economic system, but it's not an either/or. There are many, many problems with capitalism that would probably still exhibit if nepotism somehow immediately ceased.

Why do you think Capitalism has meritocracy as a core component?

Capitalism is a system where capital needs to be converted into more capital via economic action (reinvestment) rather than just sat upon.

Capital will always find ways to grow, if there are laws - they will be lobbied against. Or those with main market share will work together to stabilise the market and squash competition.

The issue with pure capitalism is that it reduces people's interactions to their economic value but some people do not have economic value, or have little economic value and no power to redress it. So capitalism can be efficient but can also be efficiently cold hearted.

Nepotism is only an issue where owners define it as an issue. Obviously the workforce at large stands to benefit from meritocracy but so do shareholders. In a free market, inadequate appointments due to nepotism should put a company at a disadvantage. But compare that with a family farm where the owners (shareholders) might prefer nepotism (appointment of a son/daughter to management) rather than opening the role to the job market. Few people object to this small scale nepotism, but should they object if shareholders of a large corporation wanted to do the same? Isn't it their money after all? The chief issues with nepotism are when it's done against the wishes of the owners of the company. But this is increasingly difficult with shareholder approval of board members and so on.

Obviously nepotism into monopolistic companies is a problem because of lack of competition but this only joins all the other problems already caused by monopolies.

In a healthy capitalism, competition is maintained. And if that's done then the risks presented by nepotism are diminished because poor appointments ought to lead to poor results.

Ironically, it's in extensive socialist state monopolies that nepotism is most dangerous primarily because of the decreased market competition.

If you think capitalism and greed go hand in hand, as I do, then it's capitalism. Netflix, for one, was a great service and it's been profitable for decades but the price hikes, account sharing crackdowns, and increasing promotion of own content really turned it into shit, all in the name of more profits.

Capitalism isn't the problem. Any economy run by human beings is going to have cronyism.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYkLVU5UGM8

I guess look around the world and see what's working? Unfettered capitalism wouldn't work, and cronyism isn't unique to capitalism.

Unfettered meritocracy doesn't work either. Say I'm born smart and ambitious and become a captain of industry. Why do I "deserve" to make 100x or 10000x more than someone who is working hard but not smart or ambitious, or someone who is wildly creative in a not monetizatable way? And how do you even ensure all kids get the same starting line to actually have a meritocracy, if you are enforcing capitalism? 100% inheritance tax maybe, and the money allocated out to everyone?

Maybe all these systems are ideas - capitalism, socialism, fascism, meritocracy, and none could be achieved in real life, because we aren't living in a controlled test environment.

On your specific question, I think cronyism and inheritance are problems that transcend capitalism, but if you could somehow magically disappear them, meritocracy would reveal its faults, there isn't a perfect system. All we can do is try to think about what we want to achieve (environmental restoration, a healthy population, a vibrant marketplace that serves everyone not just a few) and try to incrementally get there.