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Using our tax dollars for the President's buddies is not new, but it appears to be the norm now. First he bails out GM, gives money to a failing Solyndra and now his buddies at Exelon are enjoying their share of Crony Capitalism.
Why do we allow our government to pick winners and losers in the corporate world? Why do we send tax dollars to the Federal Government so that they can dole them out to their buddies?
The real crony capitalism does not involve the government in any way. Those market destroying deals are made around a table in the country club bar or on the golf course. The conspirators only rent the government to keep it semi legal.
It's not like I am a fan of crony capitalism and it's not my intention for deflect or hijack the thread but, I have to ask, when in history has cronyism not been part and parcel of capitalism. Hell nine of the thirteen colonies were established under corporate charter granted to "cronies" of the Crown and Parliament and considering who many of the delegates to the Constitutional convention were I don't see how one could argue that the protection of slavery wasn't an early example of crony capitalism at its height.
Cronyism/influence peddling has always been part of government, which is why the conversation should be about limiting its power.
The fact that it's always been here does not mean it's acceptable or that we should ignore it. My sense is that it has become much more prevalent than in the past.
And you are correct. The more money government has to dole out, the more likely there will be Crony Capitalism. When you start throwing around 3 trillion dollars and more, the waste, fraud and cronyism becomes rampant.
It's not like I am a fan of crony capitalism and it's not my intention for deflect or hijack the thread but, I have to ask, when in history has cronyism not been part and parcel of capitalism. Hell nine of the thirteen colonies were established under corporate charter granted to "cronies" of the Crown and Parliament and considering who many of the delegates to the Constitutional convention were I don't see how one could argue that the protection of slavery wasn't an early example of crony capitalism at its height.
Well said. Everyone is acting like such a virgin about crony capitalism, but it's been around since the dawn of government.
The government is a foolish and inefficient allocator of resources. Heck, they expend so many of those resourced DECIDING where to allocate the resources. At the end of the day, the free market will ultimately win. It didn't take long for the free market to crush the liberal effort to tamper with the equilibrium in the housing market. It didn't take long for them to cause tuition rates to rise 300%. It didn't take long for Solyndra to go bankrupt because the Chinese competition was cheaper. Try as they may, the government can't win. The only question is... How bad will the backlash be, and at what point can they completely upset/destroy the system entirely???
I don't really like the term crony capitalism, because it's not really capitalism. I've seen it cause confusion several times in debates, because people argue against capitalism when the problems they have in mind are really corporate welfare/corporatism/fascism. These are all better terms than "crony capitalism."
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