You don't need proof because you have already decided on the truth.
You're just wrong Tom. Your beliefs are more guided by what you want than what you perceive, and that is one dysfunction that is impossible to self-diagnose, so listen up. Maybe I can help.

Like any other complex system, capitalism evolves. It alters to adapt to new conditions, and it also evolves as its participants, human and institutional, adapt to exploit the changing environment, or to defend themselves from some of the consequences of those changes.

This is a process, it has no moral or ideological value, its simply Le Chatelier's Principle and entropy at work. Decadence sets in when some past, present, or possible future state of the system becomes ritualistically or nostalgically idealized, and the players (probably through sheer self-interest, or perhaps just ideological and quasi-religious fervor), insist that only a certain configuration is to be tolerated and any deviation must be rejected outright. That decadence does have a moral and ethical value. It is evil and it is wrong precisely because it denies the possibility and validity of experimentation and change.

The capitalism we have today is not the same we had in the Gilded Age, or in Colonial times. And it will differ from the Capitalism of the future, regardless of who wins today's ideological wars. It has changed, and will continue to change. Capitalistic variation also has a spatial as well as temporal component. Capitalism in New Zealand today is different from the Capitalism we had in Hong Kong in the 60s. These variations are partly due to local conditions, and partly due to historical perturbations induced by personalities, both human and institutional.

But the point is, we do have some control, as a free people, over what our political and economic system looks like and how it works. And there are some aspects of it over which we have no control. The laws of the marketplace are like the laws of physics, they constrain our engineering, but do not dictate it. An infinite number of separate possibilities exist that do not violate those laws. In fact, Capitalists themselves celebrate this aspect of their system, except, of course, when change threatens them personally. There is no magic set of Commandments that if followed scrupulously will guarantee virtue and stability.

In fact, the very idea that there is such a thing is destructive and toxic. Get over it, or it will poison your life to the point where you will no longer be able to adapt. The same advice is valid for both the individual as well as the community. You, and we, have a great capacity to work to make things better, don't throw that away by insisting on a past that never was, or a future that can never be.