A system of government that allows a majority to rule the minority.
That has been covered in this forum ad nauseum for the past few years.
Corporate Welfare
- Thread starter turbolapp
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A system of government that allows a majority to rule the minority.
That has been covered in this forum ad nauseum for the past few years.
The problem Jake is pointing out, is to distinguish between proximate and ultimate cause.
If I shoot you, the proximate cause of your demise was the bullet ripping through your flesh, but the ultimate cause was my pulling the trigger on the gun that fired it.
The proximate cause of GE being able to do what it does is lobbying. The ultimate cause is a system which is based on lobbying (democracy).
Greed is good. It is imperative that everyone is greedy all of the time, or they would not be able to function in a rational manner.
The market. And the current economic system (a mixed economy / soft socialism) is not sustainable anyway. What is now, probably won't be later. Permanent systems and institutions are an invention in the minds of men, not the working of nature. Nature likes to break some things and evolve others. We're passengers on that trip.
Thank you. Without a government/business partnership (aka regulation) there can be no crony capitalism.
there has, and will always be, a war between the rich and everyone else. that the battle is sold as "fairness of play" or some sort of market fetishism is nothing new. it's old an old and tired game. and when a middle class or lower class guy or girl somehow falls into that top 10% and finds him or herself part of that new class, perspective then, 9 times out of 10, changes, and the "new" rich go on the propaganda mission.
@EC, in market economies, class mobility is pretty active. Very few people are born in, and stay permanently in the lower class.
There are more rich today than ever before, per capita. The reason is the market economy, and the ability for everyone's relative standard of living to rise under capitalism.
Why else would the poor today have sneakers and cell phones, TVs and sunglasses? The western poor today live better than kings did 200 years ago.
There are more rich today than ever before, per capita. The reason is the market economy, and the ability for everyone's relative standard of living to rise under capitalism.
Why else would the poor today have sneakers and cell phones, TVs and sunglasses? The western poor today live better than kings did 200 years ago.
Where did I say greed was bad?
How?
Nope - just other forms of corruption.
You didn't, nor did I indicate you did.
Profit and loss. Strong property rights law.
I didn't understand this. You said nope, then you wrote about something unrelated.
Crony capitalism is when the government covers big business. Government can only have the power to help out big business if it can regulate, otherwise it has no authority or mandate to participate in industry.
Regulation is the most dangerous thing government does. It's pure power, for sale to the highest bidder. The only "good regulation" can come from the market, from the profit and loss system. That regulation allows competition. State regulation creates monopolies.
How does that prohibit market manipulation? It's simplistic to say any company can compete in a free market provided there is no government interference. First to market has an advantage and can run at a loss to prevent competition. Existing companies with large bankrolls can move into new markets and crush newer competition through price wars because businesses will always seek to limit competition. In theory, government regulation is supposed to limit that, but our legislators are bought and paid for so it never works as intended. However, with no regulations, monopolies would cripple our economy.
Because crony capitalism is just another form of corruption. It corrupts natural market forces, but without it other forms of corruption wouldn't cease to exist. The profit motive will ALWAYS lead to market manipulation and barriers to entry being raised. Any business seeks to create barriers to entry and it isn't always through regulation, particularly early on in a product life cycle.
More to the point, it's a system of government where individuals have exactly 1 vote to excersize their power with, while Corporations have Billions and billions of DOLLARS to excersize their power with.
...No wonder less than half of us bother to vote!
Lobbying is the Root of ALL EVIL in America... It's nothing less than a legal way to allow the few to BUY the votes that were meant for the many.
Next to this problem, I could care less who is in power, conservative, democrat, or Nazi, because the fact is they are totally limited to what they can get done with all this vote-buying going on!
This is the only thing on the whole page you've said that I disagree with.
You've seen Century of Self, I believe? Surely you can't believe that if left 100% unregulated, the Corporations of the world would simply balance themselves out perfectly and the end result would be a good one for us all?
And about full monopolies, do you believe they simply can't happen or last for very long under a truly free market, or that they aren't a problem?
Total bullshit... WTF whould happen to the Democratic party then?!? W/o welfare Dems gotz no votes.
The anarcho capitalists are still missing the root cause. It's not government in of itself, it's the ever lasting struggle for consolidation of power. Remove government, those with the most wealth are still going to find ways to consolidate power and create advantage outside of fairy tale pure market economic forces.
It's been happening ever since the dawn of aggressive agriculture and will continue as long as humans organize themselves in civilizations instead of in tribes. The problems started happening when the social framework we evolved to work in became untenable via advances in technology. We're too god damn smart for our own good, and now all we can do is figure out better ways to fuck over our fellow man. Which reminds me, I need to get back to work.
It's been happening ever since the dawn of aggressive agriculture and will continue as long as humans organize themselves in civilizations instead of in tribes. The problems started happening when the social framework we evolved to work in became untenable via advances in technology. We're too god damn smart for our own good, and now all we can do is figure out better ways to fuck over our fellow man. Which reminds me, I need to get back to work.
It's not only about politics and corruption.
Some players can simply bend the game.
Smartest guys do the same in a perfectly legit way, stealing $60 billions from your pockets:
Some players can simply bend the game.
Smartest guys do the same in a perfectly legit way, stealing $60 billions from your pockets:
This could have come directly out of "Atlas Shrugged".
If you have never read this book, read it and be prepared to be scared shitless. The crony capitalism and attacks on the true producers by those who want things done for the good of society is the path we are on.
When government picks the winners and losers in the business world based upon the businessman's subservience to the political authorities innovation and capitalism will suffer.