Smartest Thing I’ve Read All Day
Jason Kuznicki on Aug 29th 2008
As often happens, it’s written by Roderick Long:
Those who see government power and corporate power as being in conflict, and those who seem them as being in cahoots, each have a point. The alliance between government and the corporate elite is like the partnership between church and state in the Middle Ages: each one wants to be the dominant partner, so there’s naturally some pushing and shoving from time to time; but on the other hand the two parties have a common interest in holding down the rest of us, and so the conflict rarely goes too far.
And it gets better from there.
Filed in The Bookshelf
I have found Roderick’s writings to be a treasure trove of wisdom and insight.
Yes, that was very insightful, thanks for sharing Jason.
As an economist this is one things that has always frustrated me. People call free markets “pro-business” even thought the whole point of competition is to make it hard for businesses to get away with anything but serving their customers. Hell, we call it the Discipline of the Market, does that sound warm and fuzzy to you?
I blame the label “capitalism” for this. It was a term invented by Marx, a guy who saw 2 sides to every story. At is core capitalism just means “not socialism” and that’s where things get messed up. I can think of 4 very different types of capitalism just off the top of my head:
1) Liberal Capitalism (i.e. free markets)
2) Corporatist Capitalism (Basically Western Europe in its less-socialist moments)
3) Merchantilism (see Smith, A. (1776), The Wealth of Nations for examples)
4) Crony Capitalism (in post-Soviet Russia, government bribes you!)
How can we cope when 1 gets mixed up with 2-4 in the minds of the public?