Capitalism isn’t unique in perpetuating injustice, but it certainly excels at it, with passive exponentiality and unprecedented scalability.

Regarding comparison to planned economies, I was solely referring to resource distribution. Planned economies (including the planned aspects of mixed economies) typically have significantly more equitable distribution of resources than capitalism. Certainly there is still massive inequality, but it is far less than capitalism. E.g. the Gini index for USSR/Russia basically doubled when capitalism replaced communism.

Amplifying that last point:

• Capitalism amplifies and perpetuates injustice. E.g. descendants of both enslaving and enslaved are receiving exponentially multiplied effects of actions 100+ years ago.
• Because wealth is power, concentrated wealth often receives far better than average returns by rigging systems in its favor.

Even ignoring these perversions, capitalism is terrible at answering the economic question, “for whom to produce.” This isn’t much of a change relative to previous systems, but it compares unfavorably in this regard to planned economies.

bought in exchange for political capital

That’s a very uncharitable assumption of his motivations.

Dropping out of an (FPTP) primary is like awkward manual runoff voting. Once you clearly aren’t winning, you drop out so those votes can flow to the next preferred candidate.

People voting for Buttigieg switched to Biden because he was the most similar candidate. Of course Buttigieg would support the candidate that best matches his policy preferences – and the preferences of voters.