Your only seeing a part of the story, mom and pop shops went away and then hundreds of thousands mom and pops shops popped up because of Amazon. Many of the older brick and mortar type mom and pop shops have been able to take their shops to a new level because of the internet marketplace especially amazon on top of the hundreds of thousands of new independent mom and pop shops workout from home, out of their garages, etc...
Do you know anything about FBA? Do you know that many mom and pop shops have been able to use this to make their business to heights they never imagined 10 years ago and make their little income stores grow nation and worldwide?
The problem is when people stay comfortable and refuse to keep up to date with changing times. Those that put the effort into evolving into the future can prosper and those who choose to be stubborn are at risk of falling behind.
There has never been a greater time in the history of this country to make it on your own.
We dont live in a capitalist system today by definition. We really live in a socialist, capitalist, fascist big government communist sespool.
Did you know almost 24,000,000 people in America is a government job? You call this system capitalism? I wish we had a capitalist system, it simply doesnt exist LOL
(government job source:
https://usdebtclock.org/)