Things said I've said

elsewhere:

Capitalism has done great things historically for advancing the cause of individualism and the rise of the mercantile class. It allowed serfs to gain a measure of independence from their landlords and brought down most of feudalism.
Its major structural flaw however is in its "black hole gravitation" property of capital attacts capital...money makes money and the ultimate direction is monopoly..."there can only be one." Unfettered (idealized) capitalism will eventually gather all available capital to one place, all competitors absorbed into the one that owns it all. Its a Borg thing...same prinicipal.
Its why capitalists came to the conclusion that anti-monopoly laws were necessary to the continued survival of capital driven markets; because the motor of market capitalism is competition. Capitalism's keyword is aggregation.

What's the opposite of competition?

Cooperation.

Socialism. Unfettered socialism has the major flaw of subjugating the individual's independent needs to the needs of the "group". Socialism's keyword is dispersal.

A blend of the two antithetical systems is necessary at this moment of human history where both the individual and the state must both find a way to co-exist.

The individual is at a disadvantage within the capitalist paradigm because capital itself is considered a commodity and must be purchased and cannot therefore be accessed freely. Its basically a pyramid scheme wherein players already in the game have all the control over how the game is to be played. Individuals who would choose not to play the game in the first place are highly restricted within their society from acting independently of the game.

An individual who would strike out on their own and build their own self-contained "homestead" in the wilds is prevented from doing so because all the land on which he or she would wish to personally develop through their own labors is already "owned" by someone else privately or by the state. Denial of access to REAL estate, property, is the key to capitalist control.

Your best bet of living outside the major capital driven markets is to create a collective, which can raise enough capital to buy un-taxed property somewhere and to create your own sub-culture. It can be done, but it is a lot of work and hard to maintain.