crony capitalism

Capitalism and Imperialism are *not* the same thing

Voluntary trade between market participants at negotiated prices is not even close to the same thing as forced trade at forced prices where one person has a major power advantage (usually military dominance). In other words, capitalism is NOT imperialism.

Check out this video:

 

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wy4Sigqd3A&feature=player_embedded]

Some of my favorite lines from Dr. Stephen Davies:

Are capitalism and imperialism variations of the same thing?

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By Jim Ulvog, ago

Competition is good for everyone else but I need special privileges – The difference between pro-free enterprise and pro-business

There is a dramatic difference between saying you are pro-business and saying you are pro-free enterprise or pro-capitalism. Do you want lots of competition for yourself or do you want special treatment while everyone else faces competition?

Milton Friedman explains the difference:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=kB2gBgsqPac#t=20s]

 

A few of my favorite comments: (more…)

By Jim Ulvog, ago

Free market capitalism or crony capitalism – where you stand depends on where you sit

Small startup organizations favor free and open competition.

A change in attitude can hit when the startup becomes the industry standard. Maybe at that point, it would be better to put roadblocks in the path of your new competitors. Might even be worth calling on the government to do some blocking for you.

We are used to seeing the really big companies asking governments to look at some practice of their big competitors. Won’t provide any examples, but you can think of many headlines over the last few years of one tech company or another tattling on someone else, hoping the regulators will slow down their competitors.

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By Jim Ulvog, ago

Looking for the cause of poverty? It isn’t capitalism. Look for some other Cs – corruption, collusion, and cronyism

It’s not capitalism that has crushed millions of people into the dust of poverty across Africa and many other places and times around the world. Capitalism lifts people out of the dust.

What keeps the poor in grinding poverty?

Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Daniel Henninger’s column Capitalism’s Corruptions discusses the real causes of poverty (more…)

By Jim Ulvog, ago

Crony capitalism kills off eagles and other raptors

When a government picks one industry over another and gives the favored one special treatment, it is called Crony Capitalism.

That is the same description used when a government goes after one industry for breaking the law and turns a blind eye to another industry doing the same thing.

That is exactly what federal policy the California AG are doing about migratory birds and protected raptors that are killed by the so-called ‘clean energy’ industry.

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By Jim Ulvog, ago

Government protected monopolies and subsidies hinder progress – Were the so-called Robber Barrons actually anti-monopolists?

I’m slowly catching the idea that there is far more good news about Robber Barrons than conventional wisdom allows. Most of what I recall from school was criticism of those horrible, terrible, disgustingly evil men who used poor children as a breakfast garnish and then roasted their parents for dinner-time appetizers. They assuaged their horrendous guilt by building a couple of public libraries or something with a few spare bucks they couldn’t use up on conspicuous consumption.  That’s a mild exaggeration of what I recall the books were saying.

Actually, I’m beginning to realize we owe much of our prosperity and economic capacity to those men.

T. Kurt Jaros has a nice series on Cornelius Vanderbilt. The Men Who Built America: Cornelius Vanderbilt is the introduction.

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By Jim Ulvog, ago