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That's redundant and an invocation of the No True Scotsman fallacy. The cronyism is an inherent feature of capitalism, not a bug. There are no real-world exampl

That's redundant and an invocation of the No True Scotsman fallacy. The cronyism is an inherent feature of capitalism, not a bug. There are no real-world examples of non-crony capitalism. The cronyism always manifests itself from the beginning, and only gets worse.

user3939382 3y ago
It's funny how communists and capitalists both make the same point and counterpoint, just inversed.
- CapstanRoller 3y ago
  The most honest capitalists (e.g. some AnCaps, some neoliberals) do make this point, but it's not very common. As much as I disagree with their views, I respect their blunt honesty about the system they endorse. What I can't stand is the disingenuous whitewashing of capitalism, which boils down to "don't trust your lying eyes" and "it's not Real Capitalism, which is actually cool and good". One can't have a productive discussion with these sorts of evangelists, much like one can't have a productive discussion with fanatical cryptocurrency fanboys who insist that ugly monkey JPEGs and The Blonkchain will magically create a perfect society, if only we just Do It Harder. "Crony capitalism" is a thought-terminating cliche. It prevents us from discussing actually-existing capitalism.
  - hgs3 3y ago
    > "Crony capitalism" is a thought-terminating cliche. There's theory and then there's implementation. What's theoretically "wrong" with capitalism is it promotes the "bad" parts of human nature, i.e. greed, ego, materialism, etc... Cronyism isn't a theory, it's an implementation detail. You could implement a capitalist economy that discourages cronyism by capping the number of employees a company can have and limiting the radius they conduct business. Essentially force an economy with only small and competitive, locally owned ma and pa shops. This is, in practice, the way capital-driven economies worked in the far far past long before the dawn of megacorps. Communism has worked well too when communities are small and everyone knows everybody. The big problem with both ideologies is finding an implementation that doesn't suffer from "scalability" problems.
    - CapstanRoller 3y ago
      >Cronyism isn't a theory, it's an implementation detail. I argue that it's a fundamental defect, an architectural one, and it won't be solved with infinite patches and workarounds. You can patch a defective design until it's somewhat functional, but it will never compare to a properly architected design. In the case of economics, we need to consciously choose what we want to incentivize based on how we want society to look and function. >Essentially force an economy with only small and competitive, locally owned ma and pa shops. This is, in practice, the way capital-driven economies worked in the far far past long before the dawn of megacorps. This is the MAGA argument: "things were better in the old days". This is an appeal to false nostalgia and does not hold up to scrutiny. It also ignores the fact that every successful small company eventually becomes a big company. Even in the days of small/pastoral/cottage capitalism there existed the same problems we have now, just more isolated and harder to root out because they were very numerous and too widely distributed. Abuse was very common, and any complaints were dismissed as "just the way things are" or countered with "then start your own business" or "get rich enough so you don't have to participate" or "you're gay/black/foreign so you should be thankful for a job" or simply "you deserve it because <X>". These things eventually improved, but every improvement was paid for in blood. One worker at some 'ma and pa' business cannot effectively unionize, and has little bargaining power. In very small communities where everyone knew each other that worker may have more leverage by way of putting community relationships on the line (if they had some social power), but it never seemed to stop individual business owners from eventually buying up entire towns and running roughshod over the population. Recent history and contemporary life is full of examples of this sort of thing — towns where everyone works at the same lumber mill or factory owned by That One Guy Who Lives In A Huge Mansion On The Hill. Now it's a Wal-Mart or Amazon fulfillment center owned by One Corporation that's distributed and faceless. Companies are effectively dictatorships. Workers have little say in how a company is run, except in cases where they rebel against the system and go outside of it to redress their grievances. Even then, this redress has never changed the fundamental relationship between worker and capitalist: the worker will always be a subject, because there is no democracy in the workplace. It really amazes me how people can simultaneously support democracy and capitalism (dictatorship). >The big problem with both ideologies is finding an implementation that doesn't suffer from "scalability" problems. Even 'small capitalism' promotes severely undesirable incentives at its core, which appear at all levels of scaling. Can you provide an example of where it doesn't, or show that socialism/communism/whatever is just as bad?

user3939382 3y ago

It's funny how communists and capitalists both make the same point and counterpoint, just inversed.

CapstanRoller 3y ago
The most honest capitalists (e.g. some AnCaps, some neoliberals) do make this point, but it's not very common. As much as I disagree with their views, I respect their blunt honesty about the system they endorse. What I can't stand is the disingenuous whitewashing of capitalism, which boils down to "don't trust your lying eyes" and "it's not Real Capitalism, which is actually cool and good". One can't have a productive discussion with these sorts of evangelists, much like one can't have a productive discussion with fanatical cryptocurrency fanboys who insist that ugly monkey JPEGs and The Blonkchain will magically create a perfect society, if only we just Do It Harder. "Crony capitalism" is a thought-terminating cliche. It prevents us from discussing actually-existing capitalism.
- hgs3 3y ago
  > "Crony capitalism" is a thought-terminating cliche. There's theory and then there's implementation. What's theoretically "wrong" with capitalism is it promotes the "bad" parts of human nature, i.e. greed, ego, materialism, etc... Cronyism isn't a theory, it's an implementation detail. You could implement a capitalist economy that discourages cronyism by capping the number of employees a company can have and limiting the radius they conduct business. Essentially force an economy with only small and competitive, locally owned ma and pa shops. This is, in practice, the way capital-driven economies worked in the far far past long before the dawn of megacorps. Communism has worked well too when communities are small and everyone knows everybody. The big problem with both ideologies is finding an implementation that doesn't suffer from "scalability" problems.
  - CapstanRoller 3y ago
    >Cronyism isn't a theory, it's an implementation detail. I argue that it's a fundamental defect, an architectural one, and it won't be solved with infinite patches and workarounds. You can patch a defective design until it's somewhat functional, but it will never compare to a properly architected design. In the case of economics, we need to consciously choose what we want to incentivize based on how we want society to look and function. >Essentially force an economy with only small and competitive, locally owned ma and pa shops. This is, in practice, the way capital-driven economies worked in the far far past long before the dawn of megacorps. This is the MAGA argument: "things were better in the old days". This is an appeal to false nostalgia and does not hold up to scrutiny. It also ignores the fact that every successful small company eventually becomes a big company. Even in the days of small/pastoral/cottage capitalism there existed the same problems we have now, just more isolated and harder to root out because they were very numerous and too widely distributed. Abuse was very common, and any complaints were dismissed as "just the way things are" or countered with "then start your own business" or "get rich enough so you don't have to participate" or "you're gay/black/foreign so you should be thankful for a job" or simply "you deserve it because <X>". These things eventually improved, but every improvement was paid for in blood. One worker at some 'ma and pa' business cannot effectively unionize, and has little bargaining power. In very small communities where everyone knew each other that worker may have more leverage by way of putting community relationships on the line (if they had some social power), but it never seemed to stop individual business owners from eventually buying up entire towns and running roughshod over the population. Recent history and contemporary life is full of examples of this sort of thing — towns where everyone works at the same lumber mill or factory owned by That One Guy Who Lives In A Huge Mansion On The Hill. Now it's a Wal-Mart or Amazon fulfillment center owned by One Corporation that's distributed and faceless. Companies are effectively dictatorships. Workers have little say in how a company is run, except in cases where they rebel against the system and go outside of it to redress their grievances. Even then, this redress has never changed the fundamental relationship between worker and capitalist: the worker will always be a subject, because there is no democracy in the workplace. It really amazes me how people can simultaneously support democracy and capitalism (dictatorship). >The big problem with both ideologies is finding an implementation that doesn't suffer from "scalability" problems. Even 'small capitalism' promotes severely undesirable incentives at its core, which appear at all levels of scaling. Can you provide an example of where it doesn't, or show that socialism/communism/whatever is just as bad?