a large number of people toil for a modest reward while the owner of the enterprise collects a far bigger reward
You neglected to mention the frequent cases in which a large number of people toil for a modest reward while the owner of the enterprise goes bankrupt.
I get a sense that in trying to capture what I believe to be intuitively obvious to a 22-year-old, I have given you, and others, a false impression of my current stance. In general, I’m an advocate of capitalism. The word itself is loaded with unintended connotations for some people – by I think you and I use it in approximately the same way. I know of no better system for organizing the productive forces of society, by which I mean that capitalism does a good job of making things, inventing things, and keeping the majority of people happy. I do not believe it is perfect or beyond reproach – but then I don’t believe ANYTHING is perfect or beyond reproach. I do believe that schemes intended to water down capitalism with socialism don’t really show an understanding of what separates them. I also believe that a great deal of what gets called capitalism now would have horrified Adam Smith, and maybe even Milton Freedman. I don’t think cronyism discredits the whole idea, but I do think cronyism and the worst of the banking practices are threats to both free markets and to the stability of the economic system as a whole. The trick is to find solutions that don’t boil down to a general surrender to state control. My constant fear is that too many people are becoming all too willing to grant the government more and more power to fix problems that, in many cases, the government itself created. Sorry if my previous answer may have seemed rather flippant.