7 ms·

America Has Replaced Capitalism with Cronyism

107 points by moose_is_loose 4y ago

moose_is_loose 4y ago
https://twitter.com/PeterContiBrown/status/1635063012775325697 https://twitter.com/PeterContiBrown/status/16350630127753256... Edit: Even better: https://twitter.com/petercontibrown/status/1635076092339052545 https://twitter.com/petercontibrown/status/16350760923390525...
gary_0 4y ago
(2020). I don't see a full date on the article (we can probably blame SEO for that), but archive.org says it's from April 14, 2020.
- piperswe 4y ago
  It's April 13 2020 at 10:45 UTC-4 according to the metadata <script type="application/ld+json"> { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@id": "#articleSchema", "datePublished": "2020-04-13T10:45:12.734-04:00", "dateModified": "" } </script>
emodendroket 4y ago
An honest look at modern history makes it hard, in my view, to identify this halcyon era of capitalism where "cronyism" did not run rampant.
- peteradio 4y ago
  Some lessons can be learned once, others need to be learned continuously.
  - refurb 4y ago
    It’s human nature. Just like corruption, you’ll never solve it only keep it at bay. Or political power grabs. Same with cronyism. Actors have every incentive to bend rules to benefit them. The solution is to fight against it.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- readthenotes1 4y ago
  a good point. It was certainly throw off the modern day swimming pool socialist who claimed that capitalism is bad!
  - emodendroket 4y ago
    I assume you typed this on a phone and got an undesired word somewhere because I have no idea what it means.
wahnfrieden 4y ago
It's the same thing.
vitessa 4y ago
This was capitalism, a beacon of hope for people who are smart, hardworking, and comfortable with risk, promising a greater share of the spoils to them than to those who are not. Wrong. That’s not what capitalism is or means. Capitalism is an economic system in which private investors run the economy in search of personal profit, while those who lack capital rely on wage labor to survive. You can debate whether this is a good or moral system, but it’s important to get terminology right.
- dr_dshiv 4y ago
  Right, and most people mean “market-based economy”
- b1c1jones 4y ago
  How do you prevent capitalism and dollars being free speech from turning into oligarchy? Asking for a friend. Actually, a few billion friends, come to think of it.
  - wongarsu 4y ago
    It seems incredibly hard to get right. On the other hand many countries seem to get it less wrong than the US, so maybe that's a good starting point. One thing that immediately comes to mind is that first-past-the-post voting systems seem to produce pretty bad results, basically always devolving into a two party system which enables easy us-vs-them rhetoric. And while people love to debate which alternative system is the absolute best, there are many in use around the world that produce better results.
  - vitessa 4y ago
    You can’t. You have three options: 1. A violent revolution against capitalism that destroys it. 2. You slowly contain capitalism and wind it down, making the elite increasingly irrelevant, as it appeared the US and Europe might have been on track to do from 1933-73, until you’ve basically achieved socialism without necessarily calling it that. 3. Capitalism continues to corrode the restraints put in place to contain it until you have an oligarchic nightmare like the US. 3 is completely unacceptable; 1 is a bit better but still involves people getting killed. 2 is probably best if you can pull it off, but the problem is that it requires society to do the right thing for decades whereas an overthrow of capitalism can be done in weeks.
dingusdew 4y ago
"Cronyism" is the long-term result of capitalism. It will always result in this type of corruption, it's the nature of an economic system that rewards greed. Cronyism is just another way to say "Late Stage Capitalism."
- BirAdam 4y ago
  Cronyism is something that will always happen when free markets mix with democracy. In the USA, this started before the end of the first Presidential term. It isn’t new. All governments suck, all economic systems suck, and it all sucks because people are flawed. We can always try for better, but so far every system that humans design, humans also corrupt and destroy. I would argue that we should all stop trying plan the activities of millions.
  - midoridensha 4y ago
    It seems that the fundamental problem is actually humans. If we eliminate the humans, we can eliminate the problems. Maybe AI will accomplish this before long, after it reaches the same conclusion...
  - wongarsu 4y ago
    > I would argue that we should all stop trying plan the activities of millions. Not having an economic system sounds impossible. In the absence of a planned system, there would be one that spontaneously emerges, in all likelihood one that's even easier to corrupt. Not having a government would be more viable, but without a central power we would just revert to "might makes right", which is not so different from cronyism. Not to mention all the problems when infrastructure becomes profit driven or disappears, basic education has to be provided by private teachers, etc.
- EarlKing 4y ago
  Cronyism is the end stage of everything. All political and economic systems ultimate tend towards dominance by a minority who refuse to lose, and warp the system to suit their interests until they are removed by one means or another. It's a concept so old it even as a word for it: Anacyclosis.[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_cycle_theory#Polybius https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_cycle_theory#Polybius
m0llusk 4y ago
As an American I charge by the hour to service commercial and residential properties. My clients are mostly quite happy with my service. How is it that this is "cryonyism"?
- wahnfrieden 4y ago
  You have no variable capital / are not a capitalist. You’re a laborer.
  - EarlKing 4y ago
    TIL that an independent contractor with his own tools has no capital. LOL.
    - jaggederest 4y ago
      That's called a laborer. Frequently they own their own tools. "Capital", in this context, means the ownership of the means of production (classically factories, but in this century as much pointed to data, land, and regulatory capture). Specifically, the means of production that you do not operate. If you must do labor for a living, you are not a capital owner. Stop identifying with the class of owners when you are a "working stiff" even if you're making mid six figures in tech or as the owner of a small business. In "Wall Street" Gordon Gekko was talking about "400k-a-year working wall street stiffs", and that's a million a year or better these days, after inflation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqjQxs9l5fg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqjQxs9l5fg
      - EarlKing 4y ago
        Moving the goalposts when the definitions don't fit your argument isn't going to change anything. Denying the lived experience of working men does not endear you to them. Try talking with working men instead of down to them next time.
        wahnfrieden 4y ago
Havoc 4y ago
It’s really more this current iteration of capitalism. It’s not so much the cronyism itself but just how large of a chunk of the pie they took this time. See salary vs house price trends. The remainder is so small that basic structures of society are starting to collapse (can’t afford education, house, kids, healthcare etc) Had it not been turned up to 11 this could keep going.
- malermeister 4y ago
  Capitalism is all about maximizing profits. Turning it up to 11 and watching everything burn is the natural consequence.
b1c1jones 4y ago
Just call them oligarchs and have done with the whole argument. Wait, what happened to the robber barons? I guess they didn't have PACs.
- dsfyu404ed 4y ago
  The administrative state as we now know it didn't exist yet so there was nothing for the robber barons to capture to cement their place. Oligarchs depend on the administrative state for their security. The oligarch pays (bribes, political donations, what have you) the state $5 so that the state will spend $10 screwing the competition and then the oligarch's business will make $10. Of course I made these numbers up but the system by which these people hold power doesn't work if there isn't an administrative state with the power to fairly capriciously regulate the oligarch's business. The whole game is predicated on being able to buy unfair access state muscle. If the state is sitting on its ass there's no advantage to buying favor.
- ggm 4y ago
  Sorry? you think "tammany hall" didn't exist?
  - cafard 4y ago
    Tammany Hall had plenty of crooks, and no doubt was happy to make terms with robber barons. But it was far from consisting of classic "robber barons".
    - ggm 4y ago
      Tammany Hall was part of a world which started with the Robber Barons and ended with the Bosses distributing the funds to the ward heelers. Jay Gould funded Tammany Hall. Sure, it was also self-perpetuating corruption, but it had linkage. It didn't consist "of" robber barons. It was a tool they used when it suited them. I call that cronyism.
- emodendroket 4y ago
  The term "robber baron" sounds so impossibly dated it's hard to take it seriously, and "oligarch" seems to be the favored term for when people have corrupt business relations in enemy states, so perhaps using "oligarch" is more illuminating for a modern audience.
dragonwriter 4y ago
Capitalism always was cronyism (so was feudalism, but with a different favored class.) It hasn’t been replaced, some people are just realizing the things that have been pointed out since critics of capitalism coined the name “capitalism”, refelecting its favored-class orientation, for it.
- s1artibartfast 4y ago
  Corruption, greed, and power dynamics are features of humanity. They are not the only features, but they have always existed, and be a challenge in any economic or political system.
  - RedCondor 4y ago
    [flagged]
  - Gigachad 4y ago
    You can witness the same problems people have with capitalism demonstrated by monkeys and most other animals. It’s really just nature, some will be driven to have resources and power.
throwawaylinux 4y ago
However, no more. Modern-day capitalism in America is to flatten the risk curve for people who already have money by borrowing from future generations with debt-fueled bailouts for companies. We have consciously decided to reduce the downside for the wealthy, thereby limiting the upside for future generations. That's modern-day America (and western countries in general), but massive government taxation and borrowing, and spending on bloated, inefficient, and corrupt programs to buy votes and scratch backs won't get more love from "capitalists" than it will from anybody else. It's not capitalism that is going bad, it is government.
- malermeister 4y ago
  We just had all of the VCs show their ass (including the ones running this very site) by begging Big Government to please step in and bail them out. It's capitalism, not the government.
  - throwawaylinux 4y ago
    Again, the system of massive government regulation and taxation, borrowing, and spending programmes is not "capitalism". I don't know what "VCs show their ass", or people asking the government to help them has anything to do with it. Government propping up special interests is pretty anti capitalistic, whether it's a corporation, an unemployed person, or a college student trying to default on their loans.
    - polygamous_bat 4y ago
      > Government propping up special interests is pretty anti capitalistic, whether it's a corporation, an unemployed person, or a college student trying to default on their loans. So I am assuming a purely capitalistic system would let the elderly and the disabled die on the street begging for charity? Are you advocating for such a system? Because no thank you, I am good.
      - throwawaylinux 4y ago
malermeister 4y ago
Capitalism is cronyism. The free market only exists in ideological fairy tales, just like soviet five year plans.
my_city 4y ago
Lol at the mass media trying to exculpate capitalism. This is exactly capitalism.
- drak0n1c 4y ago
  Was the USSR exactly communism?
  - malermeister 4y ago
    The USSR never claimed to be communist. Communism is the end goal the USSR strived to achieve.
    - kelseyfrog 4y ago
      As well, USSR wasn't exactly a classless, stateless, moneyless society.
RobotToaster 4y ago
IIRC Adam Smith considered both corporations and landlords to be incompatible with his "ideal" form of capitalism.
- unmole 4y ago
  Pretty sure Adam Smith never used the term capitalism.
IndoorPatio 4y ago
They're The Same Picture.gif
humanlity 4y ago
communism -> capitalism -> cronyism -> socialism America lead the world 100 year

https://twitter.com/PeterContiBrown/status/1635063012775325697 https://twitter.com/PeterContiBrown/status/16350630127753256... Edit: Even better: https://twitter.com/petercontibrown/status/1635076092339052545 https://twitter.com/petercontibrown/status/16350760923390525...

gary_0 4y ago

(2020). I don't see a full date on the article (we can probably blame SEO for that), but archive.org says it's from April 14, 2020.

piperswe 4y ago
It's April 13 2020 at 10:45 UTC-4 according to the metadata <script type="application/ld+json"> { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@id": "#articleSchema", "datePublished": "2020-04-13T10:45:12.734-04:00", "dateModified": "" } </script>

emodendroket 4y ago

An honest look at modern history makes it hard, in my view, to identify this halcyon era of capitalism where "cronyism" did not run rampant.

peteradio 4y ago
Some lessons can be learned once, others need to be learned continuously.
- refurb 4y ago
  It’s human nature. Just like corruption, you’ll never solve it only keep it at bay. Or political power grabs. Same with cronyism. Actors have every incentive to bend rules to benefit them. The solution is to fight against it.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
readthenotes1 4y ago
a good point. It was certainly throw off the modern day swimming pool socialist who claimed that capitalism is bad!
- emodendroket 4y ago
  I assume you typed this on a phone and got an undesired word somewhere because I have no idea what it means.

wahnfrieden 4y ago

It's the same thing.

vitessa 4y ago

This was capitalism, a beacon of hope for people who are smart, hardworking, and comfortable with risk, promising a greater share of the spoils to them than to those who are not. Wrong. That’s not what capitalism is or means. Capitalism is an economic system in which private investors run the economy in search of personal profit, while those who lack capital rely on wage labor to survive. You can debate whether this is a good or moral system, but it’s important to get terminology right.

dr_dshiv 4y ago
Right, and most people mean “market-based economy”
b1c1jones 4y ago
How do you prevent capitalism and dollars being free speech from turning into oligarchy? Asking for a friend. Actually, a few billion friends, come to think of it.
- wongarsu 4y ago
  It seems incredibly hard to get right. On the other hand many countries seem to get it less wrong than the US, so maybe that's a good starting point. One thing that immediately comes to mind is that first-past-the-post voting systems seem to produce pretty bad results, basically always devolving into a two party system which enables easy us-vs-them rhetoric. And while people love to debate which alternative system is the absolute best, there are many in use around the world that produce better results.
- vitessa 4y ago
  You can’t. You have three options: 1. A violent revolution against capitalism that destroys it. 2. You slowly contain capitalism and wind it down, making the elite increasingly irrelevant, as it appeared the US and Europe might have been on track to do from 1933-73, until you’ve basically achieved socialism without necessarily calling it that. 3. Capitalism continues to corrode the restraints put in place to contain it until you have an oligarchic nightmare like the US. 3 is completely unacceptable; 1 is a bit better but still involves people getting killed. 2 is probably best if you can pull it off, but the problem is that it requires society to do the right thing for decades whereas an overthrow of capitalism can be done in weeks.

dingusdew 4y ago

"Cronyism" is the long-term result of capitalism. It will always result in this type of corruption, it's the nature of an economic system that rewards greed. Cronyism is just another way to say "Late Stage Capitalism."

BirAdam 4y ago
Cronyism is something that will always happen when free markets mix with democracy. In the USA, this started before the end of the first Presidential term. It isn’t new. All governments suck, all economic systems suck, and it all sucks because people are flawed. We can always try for better, but so far every system that humans design, humans also corrupt and destroy. I would argue that we should all stop trying plan the activities of millions.
- midoridensha 4y ago
  It seems that the fundamental problem is actually humans. If we eliminate the humans, we can eliminate the problems. Maybe AI will accomplish this before long, after it reaches the same conclusion...
- wongarsu 4y ago
  > I would argue that we should all stop trying plan the activities of millions. Not having an economic system sounds impossible. In the absence of a planned system, there would be one that spontaneously emerges, in all likelihood one that's even easier to corrupt. Not having a government would be more viable, but without a central power we would just revert to "might makes right", which is not so different from cronyism. Not to mention all the problems when infrastructure becomes profit driven or disappears, basic education has to be provided by private teachers, etc.
EarlKing 4y ago
Cronyism is the end stage of everything. All political and economic systems ultimate tend towards dominance by a minority who refuse to lose, and warp the system to suit their interests until they are removed by one means or another. It's a concept so old it even as a word for it: Anacyclosis.[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_cycle_theory#Polybius https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_cycle_theory#Polybius

m0llusk 4y ago

As an American I charge by the hour to service commercial and residential properties. My clients are mostly quite happy with my service. How is it that this is "cryonyism"?

wahnfrieden 4y ago
You have no variable capital / are not a capitalist. You’re a laborer.
- EarlKing 4y ago
  TIL that an independent contractor with his own tools has no capital. LOL.
  - jaggederest 4y ago
    That's called a laborer. Frequently they own their own tools. "Capital", in this context, means the ownership of the means of production (classically factories, but in this century as much pointed to data, land, and regulatory capture). Specifically, the means of production that you do not operate. If you must do labor for a living, you are not a capital owner. Stop identifying with the class of owners when you are a "working stiff" even if you're making mid six figures in tech or as the owner of a small business. In "Wall Street" Gordon Gekko was talking about "400k-a-year working wall street stiffs", and that's a million a year or better these days, after inflation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqjQxs9l5fg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqjQxs9l5fg
    - EarlKing 4y ago
      Moving the goalposts when the definitions don't fit your argument isn't going to change anything. Denying the lived experience of working men does not endear you to them. Try talking with working men instead of down to them next time.
      - wahnfrieden 4y ago

Havoc 4y ago

It’s really more this current iteration of capitalism. It’s not so much the cronyism itself but just how large of a chunk of the pie they took this time. See salary vs house price trends. The remainder is so small that basic structures of society are starting to collapse (can’t afford education, house, kids, healthcare etc) Had it not been turned up to 11 this could keep going.

malermeister 4y ago
Capitalism is all about maximizing profits. Turning it up to 11 and watching everything burn is the natural consequence.

b1c1jones 4y ago

Just call them oligarchs and have done with the whole argument. Wait, what happened to the robber barons? I guess they didn't have PACs.

dsfyu404ed 4y ago
The administrative state as we now know it didn't exist yet so there was nothing for the robber barons to capture to cement their place. Oligarchs depend on the administrative state for their security. The oligarch pays (bribes, political donations, what have you) the state $5 so that the state will spend $10 screwing the competition and then the oligarch's business will make $10. Of course I made these numbers up but the system by which these people hold power doesn't work if there isn't an administrative state with the power to fairly capriciously regulate the oligarch's business. The whole game is predicated on being able to buy unfair access state muscle. If the state is sitting on its ass there's no advantage to buying favor.
ggm 4y ago
Sorry? you think "tammany hall" didn't exist?
- cafard 4y ago
  Tammany Hall had plenty of crooks, and no doubt was happy to make terms with robber barons. But it was far from consisting of classic "robber barons".
  - ggm 4y ago
    Tammany Hall was part of a world which started with the Robber Barons and ended with the Bosses distributing the funds to the ward heelers. Jay Gould funded Tammany Hall. Sure, it was also self-perpetuating corruption, but it had linkage. It didn't consist "of" robber barons. It was a tool they used when it suited them. I call that cronyism.
emodendroket 4y ago
The term "robber baron" sounds so impossibly dated it's hard to take it seriously, and "oligarch" seems to be the favored term for when people have corrupt business relations in enemy states, so perhaps using "oligarch" is more illuminating for a modern audience.

dragonwriter 4y ago

Capitalism always was cronyism (so was feudalism, but with a different favored class.) It hasn’t been replaced, some people are just realizing the things that have been pointed out since critics of capitalism coined the name “capitalism”, refelecting its favored-class orientation, for it.

s1artibartfast 4y ago
Corruption, greed, and power dynamics are features of humanity. They are not the only features, but they have always existed, and be a challenge in any economic or political system.
- RedCondor 4y ago
  [flagged]
- Gigachad 4y ago
  You can witness the same problems people have with capitalism demonstrated by monkeys and most other animals. It’s really just nature, some will be driven to have resources and power.

throwawaylinux 4y ago

However, no more. Modern-day capitalism in America is to flatten the risk curve for people who already have money by borrowing from future generations with debt-fueled bailouts for companies. We have consciously decided to reduce the downside for the wealthy, thereby limiting the upside for future generations. That's modern-day America (and western countries in general), but massive government taxation and borrowing, and spending on bloated, inefficient, and corrupt programs to buy votes and scratch backs won't get more love from "capitalists" than it will from anybody else. It's not capitalism that is going bad, it is government.

malermeister 4y ago
We just had all of the VCs show their ass (including the ones running this very site) by begging Big Government to please step in and bail them out. It's capitalism, not the government.
- throwawaylinux 4y ago
  Again, the system of massive government regulation and taxation, borrowing, and spending programmes is not "capitalism". I don't know what "VCs show their ass", or people asking the government to help them has anything to do with it. Government propping up special interests is pretty anti capitalistic, whether it's a corporation, an unemployed person, or a college student trying to default on their loans.
  - polygamous_bat 4y ago
    > Government propping up special interests is pretty anti capitalistic, whether it's a corporation, an unemployed person, or a college student trying to default on their loans. So I am assuming a purely capitalistic system would let the elderly and the disabled die on the street begging for charity? Are you advocating for such a system? Because no thank you, I am good.
    - throwawaylinux 4y ago

malermeister 4y ago

Capitalism is cronyism. The free market only exists in ideological fairy tales, just like soviet five year plans.

my_city 4y ago

Lol at the mass media trying to exculpate capitalism. This is exactly capitalism.

drak0n1c 4y ago
Was the USSR exactly communism?
- malermeister 4y ago
  The USSR never claimed to be communist. Communism is the end goal the USSR strived to achieve.
  - kelseyfrog 4y ago
    As well, USSR wasn't exactly a classless, stateless, moneyless society.

RobotToaster 4y ago

IIRC Adam Smith considered both corporations and landlords to be incompatible with his "ideal" form of capitalism.

unmole 4y ago
Pretty sure Adam Smith never used the term capitalism.

IndoorPatio 4y ago

They're The Same Picture.gif

humanlity 4y ago

communism -> capitalism -> cronyism -> socialism America lead the world 100 year