The purposeful destruction of commodities for economic reasons is in itself nothing new in capitalism, but an integral part of its daily working from the beginning. It was in 1799 that Fourier first became convinced of the necessity of a new form of social Organisation when be found himself entrusted with the task at Marseilles to superintend the destruction of a quantity of rice held for higher prices during a scarcity of food till it had become unfit for use. Nevertheless, this rice had at any rate been held back in the hope of sale, and was only destroyed because it had become unfit for use. This was not yet the modern principle of the wholesale destruction of good rice, good wheat, good cotton, good coffee and good meat.

In the same way the endeavour by combination to limit stocks, restrict production, and maintain or raise prices is inherent, not merely in capitalism, but in commodity economy from the beginning. As Adam Smith wrote in his Wealth of Nations:

“People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public or in some contrivance to raise prices.” (Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, Book 1, Chapter 10, Part ii.)

But such a policy appeared to Adam Smith, the original voice of classic capitalism, as an offence against the principles of capitalist production, as “a conspiracy against the public.” It has remained for our day that all the capitalist governments of the world should meet together in the World Economic Conference to proclaim, with the combined voice of all the most enlightened, progressive statesmen and all the economists, the supreme aim to restrict production and to raise prices.

- Rajani Palme Dutt, Fascism and Social Revolution, Chapter 3, section titled The Destruction of the Productive Forces

As we can see, even early on, Capitalists would do anything, including destroy commodity capital (the fruit of labor), in order to raise profits and increase prices. Some early capitalists moralized about this and saw this as somehow an affront to capitalism as a mode of production. But over 200 years of experience has shown us that this is not an anomaly, but something built into the system itself. It is similar to how the petty bourgeois detest monopoly and fetishize competition, even though monopoly is the direct result of competition resulting in "winners" and "losers." Ben Shapiro is doing the same thing here, trying to distinguish between some kind of idealized noble "capitalism" of gentlemen in fair economic competition, and the actually existing ruthless system of exploitation we live under. But such a distinction is fundamentally illusory, and is a form of priestly apologetics for a decaying and unsustainable mode of production.