While competition is supposed to be central to capitalism, the wealthiest people alive today have gotten rich by suppressing it. They’re brazen about it too. Peter Thiel famously announced in 2014 that “competition is for losers” and counseled companies to monopolize their domains. Business schools teach baby MBAs the same lessons: to avoid industries with high competition, to do what it takes to keep potential competitors out, and, if all else fails, to buy them up. Warren Buffett explains that, in business, he looks “for economic castles protected by unbreachable moats,” because “the products or services that have wide, sustainable moats around them are the ones that deliver rewards to investors.”

That language disguises what’s really going on here. When Buffett talks about moats, he means the kind of barriers that lock in customers and suppliers and make markets inhospitable to new entrants. These corporations are not protecting castles from marauders. They are creating chokepoints that separate producers from consumers so they can capture a disproportionate share of the value from other people’s work.