The colonialism argument is literally true, in the sense that the origins of joint-stock shareholder capitalism with absentee owners lies in outfits like the British and Dutch East India Companies, the Hudson's Bay Company, and so on. Adam Smith condemned such outfits and warned against the dangers of running the domestic economy of Britain the same way, though in his era the domestic economy of Britain was mostly one of little farms and workshops, so the danger seemed remote.

It was said of fascism in the WW2 era that it introduced the rapacities of the frontier to the heart of civilised Europe (as they used to say back then). In a similar vein, very much the same can be said of joint-stock capitalism, especially the kind that strictly and formally prioritises the shareholder above all other interests, in reaction to earlier 1950s/1960s/1970s trends by which the shareholder was being de-emphasised in favour of other stakeholders in a manner analogous to the rise of constitutional monarchy in the nineteenth century.