It’s an ouroboros, a cancer. One leads to the other and back again until everything has been extracted and the house of cards collapses in on itself and the survivors fight over the scraps to repeat these mistakes over again. The sooner mindless growth is reigned in and economic targets are forcibly aligned with reality, involving hard reality checks for very powerful and very despicable (subject of many articles trending on HN this past week) the better we’ll all be.
Cause and effect may be the reverse.
Capitalism simplifies and commodifies, to extract more of the surplus.
Consolidation is often rationalized with the goal to "reduce redundancies" (and passing the "savings" onto consumers, naturally).