If someone were to sit down and actually tally the most famous examples of capitalist abuses, using specific names instead of generalities, most average people would probably not be able to run up a list of more than a couple of dozen. Someone doing some research might be able to whomp up fifty to 100 over the history of the U.S. before they started repeating themselves.

Yet we never hear about the hundreds of large corporations and many thousands of smaller businesses who do represent the best of their kind.

You hear about the robber barons, many of which used government as their whip to prevent competition (what happened to someone who opened a competitor to a company store in a company town? Hint: he wasn't outcompeted), and not so much about people like Henry Ford, who increased the success of his company by, without coercion, offering his workers much better wages and conditions. He wasn't the only one, either.

I have worked for companies where I know the top priority was giving the customer the best deal for the lowest price. I worked for a food company where quality was almost an obsessive-compulsive issue, and an office machine company where making the machinery immortal was a major goal. We put copiers through tests that would have sweated Mars rovers.

There are several giant grocery chains where I live, and the competition has turned all of them into luxurious and wonderful places to shop, particularly over the past ten years. Three chain stores in my neighborhood (Nob Hill and Safeway, mostly) have remodeled completely, and Trader Joe's, Whole Foods, and Costco are all doing bang-up business, each in their own customer niches. I have no idea what's keeping competition out of your neighborhood--building a new store isn't THAT big of an investment for an existing chain--but you might want to see if some government zoning "fix" isn't in it somewhere.