Fundamental attribution error in judging capitalism/socialism

History has proven over and over that free markets are more efficient than centrally planned economies. However, over and over again, people continue to attribute United States' success in 20th century to second world war, immigration, having a head start, size, cultural aspects and few other factors. As everyone knows, US economy has grown almost every year and there should be something fundamentally different about its economy.

Take North Korea and South Korea - Same people, same culture, same start at second world war. One country is dying of hunger, while the other is one of the world's wealthiest. East Germany and West Germany - Per capita of West Germany was much higher than the East when the wall came down. and so on...

The affluent countries are either capitalist (or) had very rich natural resources like oil. What more proof do the people need? Wake up and stop looking to Govt for solutions. Wake up and take a pledge that you wont be fooled by liberals who promise to make you rich (or) the country better.

People tend to attribute successes of other people to fundamental attributions. That's exactly what's happening here. People tend to believe that US was either lucky to get rich (or) the Govt had something to do it. Wake up fellows...Economic forces are more powerful than the political forces. US Govt. had very little to do with success of the economy. It's the capitalist market that's doing the magic.

Which companies survived, which didn't and which won't in the Internet revolution?

In last decade, .com companies powered by Internet have successfully outgrown (or) have become threatening competitors to their offline equivalents. However, some companies and industries survived without quickly adapting to Internet. Let's do a quick retrospection on which ones did and why.

The companies which had to struggle to survive (or) didn't survive

• Book Stores and Libraries
• Newspapers and magazines
  
• Electronic Stores
• Movie rentals
• Middle men like lending agents, travel agents, insurance agents and used car auto dealers
  
• Middle men for household skilled trade like landscaping, plumbing, carpentry, flooring and so on..

The companies which didn't have to struggle as much

• Grocery Stores
• Retail Banking
• Hospitals and doctors
  
• Shipping Companies
• Electricity providers
  
• Apparel stores
• Restaurants / Coffee shops
• Auto rentals
• Airlines (Corporate travel probably went down)
  

The companies which I believe will have a run for their money in near future

• Movie theaters
• Furniture/Mattress stores
• New-auto dealers
  
• Realtors
• Retail banking
• Schools and universities
  

Any service that can be performed over Internet will eventually be and anything that can be sold over Internet will be.

Some companies survived without quickly adapting to Internet. It's obvious looking backwards and understand why these companies survived.

• Heavily capital intensive to start a new company (Retail banks, shipping, flights,...)
  
• Service needs an actual human being to be present.(e.g doctors, haircut, restaurants,..)
  
• The quality of service cannot be ascertained by just looking at a picture (or) where quality differentiation is high among similar items. (E.g. Not all tomatoes are same. People want to look at an actual tomato before buying. However all SONY DCR-360s are the same)

Notable exceptions are the ones I mentioned in the third bulleted section (New auto dealers, Realtors, schools,...). But they too will eventually go away.