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Crony Capitalism is failing America. Capitalism is succeeding the Globe. It is responsible for the most prosperity, the lifting up of poverty, and improvement

by jimmy1 8y ago

Crony Capitalism is failing America. Capitalism is succeeding the Globe. It is responsible for the most prosperity, the lifting up of poverty, and improvement in living conditions and life expectancy in the history of literal history. I hate how capitalism has become a political boogeyman now. Fortunately, it has actually served to unite some of the left-wing and right-wing thinkers and forge some unlikely alliances. Probably completely off-topic, but having listened to many of his interviews, it's also one of the main reasons why Howard Schultz chose to run as an independent instead of a democrat.

npongratz 8y ago
Agreed. And I'd even remove the "capitalism" from "crony capitalism". It's simply cronyism.
Miner49er 8y ago
Crony capitalism is capitalism. And capitalism hits poor countries harder then the U.S. doesn't it? I'd say people working in sweatshops have it worse then most poor Americans.
- pitaj 8y ago
  What a terrible comparison. Why don't you compare how those people were doing before and after enterprise entered their countries? Their standards of living are drastically better with sweatshop work than without it, and continues to increase.
  - Miner49er 8y ago
    Their standards of living are better due to improvements in technology, not capitalism. Unless you think that the technological improvements we have today are only due to capitalism, but I'm not so sure that's the case.
- jimmy1 8y ago
  By your standard then, Stallinism and Maoism is socialism. The rest of this comment is beyond ridiculous.
chadwittman 8y ago
I don't quite disagree, but I think his point is that capitalism breeds cronyism. Thus, they're one in the same.
- pitaj 8y ago
  Statism breeds cronyism in proportion to the power the state has over the market. Politicians need to get their dirty hands off the throat of the market.
  - AlexandrB 8y ago
    This is wrong for a variety reasons. Ranging from the way money and power are intimately linked (even if you exclude cronyism as a mechanism). To the way that concentrated money can create its own markets or overrule existing ones by force (see heavily subsidized "startups" like Uber driving taxis out of business). But let's assume you're right. The problem then is that the purpose of society is not to create efficient markets, it's the purpose of efficient markets to maintains and support a functional society. Markets are a means not an ends. On their own they have no moral compass, they're simply a distributed genetic algorithm seeking supply/demand maxima. There's nothing intrinsic about the structure of capitalism that suggests it tends towards a fair and equitable society. Indeed, large companies have a long history of supporting and co-operating with some of the worst dictators in history. The state, when it works, can be a means of directing market forces - either through taxation or regulation - towards ends that society thinks are beneficial. I don't get a vote in how IBM or Microsoft or Facebook operate. I do get to vote for representatives who I think will keep these companies in check and, for example, stop Facebook from surveilling me everywhere I go. I don't know about you, but I'm not interested in solutions to cronyism that mean I have even less power over my environment.
dv_dt 8y ago
My best interpretation is in impoverished nations, a key economic bottleneck is lack of sufficient capital to improve their economy. Capitalism works pretty well in that stage to improve everybody's lot. Economic growth in this stage is great, double digit growth or high single digits is common. In more advanced nations, access to capital isn't an overall issue. However, economic growth is low single digits in a "good" year. And if you shift to other measures of people's security, as shown in Dalio's collection of data, the improvements are slowing or even reversing. This isn't making capitalism a boogeyman. It's a serious criticism of a phenomena that we need to understand, or, as Dalio points out, we're in for a lot of serious chaos ahead.
itsthewrongway 8y ago
Agreed. If anyone is interested in this topic I would recommend checking out Conscious Capitalism. Conscious Capitalism, With a New Preface by the Authors: Liberating the Heroic Spirit of Business https://www.amazon.com/dp/1625271751/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_lu4PCbG0ZA382 https://www.amazon.com/dp/1625271751/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_lu...

by jimmy1 8y ago

npongratz 8y ago

Agreed. And I'd even remove the "capitalism" from "crony capitalism". It's simply cronyism.

Miner49er 8y ago

Crony capitalism is capitalism. And capitalism hits poor countries harder then the U.S. doesn't it? I'd say people working in sweatshops have it worse then most poor Americans.

pitaj 8y ago
What a terrible comparison. Why don't you compare how those people were doing before and after enterprise entered their countries? Their standards of living are drastically better with sweatshop work than without it, and continues to increase.
- Miner49er 8y ago
  Their standards of living are better due to improvements in technology, not capitalism. Unless you think that the technological improvements we have today are only due to capitalism, but I'm not so sure that's the case.
jimmy1 8y ago
By your standard then, Stallinism and Maoism is socialism. The rest of this comment is beyond ridiculous.

chadwittman 8y ago

I don't quite disagree, but I think his point is that capitalism breeds cronyism. Thus, they're one in the same.

pitaj 8y ago
Statism breeds cronyism in proportion to the power the state has over the market. Politicians need to get their dirty hands off the throat of the market.
- AlexandrB 8y ago
  This is wrong for a variety reasons. Ranging from the way money and power are intimately linked (even if you exclude cronyism as a mechanism). To the way that concentrated money can create its own markets or overrule existing ones by force (see heavily subsidized "startups" like Uber driving taxis out of business). But let's assume you're right. The problem then is that the purpose of society is not to create efficient markets, it's the purpose of efficient markets to maintains and support a functional society. Markets are a means not an ends. On their own they have no moral compass, they're simply a distributed genetic algorithm seeking supply/demand maxima. There's nothing intrinsic about the structure of capitalism that suggests it tends towards a fair and equitable society. Indeed, large companies have a long history of supporting and co-operating with some of the worst dictators in history. The state, when it works, can be a means of directing market forces - either through taxation or regulation - towards ends that society thinks are beneficial. I don't get a vote in how IBM or Microsoft or Facebook operate. I do get to vote for representatives who I think will keep these companies in check and, for example, stop Facebook from surveilling me everywhere I go. I don't know about you, but I'm not interested in solutions to cronyism that mean I have even less power over my environment.

dv_dt 8y ago

My best interpretation is in impoverished nations, a key economic bottleneck is lack of sufficient capital to improve their economy. Capitalism works pretty well in that stage to improve everybody's lot. Economic growth in this stage is great, double digit growth or high single digits is common. In more advanced nations, access to capital isn't an overall issue. However, economic growth is low single digits in a "good" year. And if you shift to other measures of people's security, as shown in Dalio's collection of data, the improvements are slowing or even reversing. This isn't making capitalism a boogeyman. It's a serious criticism of a phenomena that we need to understand, or, as Dalio points out, we're in for a lot of serious chaos ahead.

itsthewrongway 8y ago

Agreed. If anyone is interested in this topic I would recommend checking out Conscious Capitalism. Conscious Capitalism, With a New Preface by the Authors: Liberating the Heroic Spirit of Business https://www.amazon.com/dp/1625271751/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_lu4PCbG0ZA382 https://www.amazon.com/dp/1625271751/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_lu...