In order to spot free market, lessaiz-faire capitalism, we would need to travel back in time. We would need to rewind in an epoch where economic exchanges didn’t have any regulating intermediate to dictate the rules. We would eventually find out that pure Capitalism only existed in very rare instances. Indeed, what we will eventually realise is that today most societies operate on a rotten version of Capitalism.
We almost always had politician-businessmen and businessmen-politicians, working together, imposing their own interests through the coercion of the State. The phenomenon still continues under what appears to be a “legal system”. Every single country on the face of this planet controls in some way the economic activities of its citizens. They make sure that a few elites can benefit at the expense of everybody else. This phenomenon goes by the name of Corporatism or Crony Capitalism. It hijacks all the benefits of free market Capitalism, allocating them only to a certain few.
Corporatism resembles a viral infection. One cannot really get rid of it completely. The freer the market, the less exposed it is to the ills of Corporatism. The more restrictions a country has, the more Corporatism it experiences. Every single table of data we have reveals that the less prevalent the effect of Corporatism, the more economic prosperity it enjoys. For example Switzerland, considered one of the most successful countries in the world, employs economic freedom to the maximum limiting corporatism significantly. Other countries like Singapore, Hong Kong and Luxembourg follow a similar model.
Most people in the rest, not so free economies, still believe that their own government is there for their own good, protecting them against the “evil capitalists”. The funny thing is that almost nobody thinks that the government might be a business in itself, taking advantage of the citizens through legal means. This is after all how monopolies are created. Special rights are allocated to certain individuals while the rest are stripped off from economic benefits. Under a free market, the occurrence of natural monopoly becomes impossible. There is not a single piece of technology or natural resource that cannot be subjected to competition and innovation under a free market.
A great example of corporatist monopoly is the energy market. A few companies that are in bed with the government get the privileges for fossil fuels all around the world, while holding at the same time the technological rights for renewable energies. Only after fossil fuels run out completely will renewable technologies be fully implemented. We could have gotten rid of fossil fuels completely by now if it wasn’t for a few corporatist operating companies that control how these technologies are rolled out. The Kyoto Protocol fiasco stands as a great example to this. Other markets, like the ones of healthcare and real estate, follow a similar model.
The infamous 1% elite ruling the planet, the “Bad Capitalists” that we so often hear about, was partially created by the democratic approval of the 99%. Since most of society remains economically ignorant of Corporatism, it still votes for its own economic enslavement instead of freedom. On top of this, the elite 1% is largely a delusion since wealth shifts positions constantly. The truth is rather scarier. People enslave themselves.
A way to demonstrate this absurdity is to consider an individual who takes a loan to own a house. This person will immediately find themselves in the 1% elite spectrum, even if the 1 million property is still owned by the bank. He would be in a sense an "evil elite". The calculations for coming up with the privileged 1% don’t just take into consideration what one has, but what one owes as well. In a culture of debt the 1% becomes rather an abstraction in regards to what really goes on. Corporatism, or rather corporatist mentality, has put the entire planet in debt, unable for anyone to distinguish who owns and who owes what. It is as if the cumulative irresponsibility of the entire planet has been accumulated in one place. Everyone is waiting for everyone else to bail them out.
The problem was never the 1% but the rest 99% that complains about the problem and keeps voting, thus perpetuating the phenomenon of Corporatism. Our mothers, fathers, sisters and friends are the responsible ones. They don’t realise that their cumulative vote creates corporatist elites that turn people against one another. The hope that the next politician will be better than the previous one is a common shared delusion. The situation reminds an abusive partner, a variation of the Stockholm Syndrome, where the victim tries to protect and defend their abuser. We are practically torturing ourselves by giving power to our worst nightmares.
Perhaps the most prevalent reason against the idea of Capitalism and the consequential support of Corporatism is the misconception against the nature of selfishness. People believe that the world is structured in a way that the strongest thrive at the expense of the weak. The masses are kept under control by fastening chains on their own ankles. We give power to some representatives in order to regulate our own insecurities. Evidently, this only adds to the problem, it doesn't solve it.
If Corporatism prevailed at full power on our planet, humanity would have perished centuries ago. Luckily enough, the new information age allows people to come into new realisations about the structure of the economic world. Less and less people vote for their political systems. Most governments, unable to handle their massive debt, are forced to allocate more freedoms to individuals and companies in order to bail them out. Corporatism itself is inefficient and it slowly crumbles under its own weight.
Nonetheless, it is vital for newer generations to have a basic economic understanding in regards to what constitutes freedom. Corporatism feeds on a primitive fear for the unknown, the unregulated. As teleological beings we naively strive for control and order. Truth is, as I mentioned in a previous article, the world has been and always will be spontaneously ordered. Corporatists that are given power by the public know this very well. This is why they do whatever they want to, while convincing everyone else to follow their own rules. The solution against Corporatism is what constitutes it immune to begin with—and what the masses are often brainwashed to dread; anarchy.
Are we brave enough to live by our own rules?
Solid post. "Corporatism" now I have a name for it!
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“Corporatism” is best understood as an alliance of business, labor and government, with government as the senior partner. Ed Klein wrote in one of his books how Obama is very enanamored of the idea.
Corporatism, in the sense I defined it, is anathema to a system of free minds and free markets. The people are not served by the government, but merely have their role to fill in a managed system. Corporatism is the basic structure of most Kleptocracies.
Blaming Corporatism or any other bad thing on private sector organizations (like corporations) is wrong, I think. Political power is the coin of the realm, and private actors are all supplicants to the politically powerful, to the extent that power extends to such individuals’ livelihood. The game today is to buy off the politically powerful, in order to be left alone. All big economic actors, including oil companies, have to do it. Of course, it gives them access to plead for their special interest, which is a good side business for the pol’s, e.g. the Clinton Foundation.
@redq
Regardless of "good" or "bad" people merely need to understand the distinction. Only then the puzzle can unravel in social consiousness and things really start taking a different turn.
David Mamet wrote in his book The Secret Knowledge: “between Good and Evil there is no choice, and thus moral choice means a choice between two evils.” There is no moral choice between free markets and 'corporatism'. Corporatism is clearly bad.
Capitalism + Government, when the two become symbiotic to one another == Corporatism and with a dysfunctional, completely hijacked democratic process, with less than half of the electorate participating, this can be further described as Fascism.
If you do not see this to be the obvious case, then you are on the inside, benefiting from the arrangement. :-)
Yes! Bravo. You win the internet today!
Anarchism combined with property rights, exploitation of workers, and the accumulation of capital can never work. Only a post scarcity soicety can be an anarchist society, otherwise the insane inequality and suffering will continue, even without the state. Maybe Google and Facebook would start world war 3.
Property rights are essential, starting with yourself as the main property.
Exploitation of workers is impossible in a free society. If you think you are being exploited you simply stop working there.
I doubt it. There is no such thing as post-scarcity society (i know i know zeitgeist and all). Even if humans had everything they have today, new needs will be created. It wouldn't have to be material but certainly something else would have spawned as a need. In much the same way, nobody in 1850 thought that social media connection would actually be a need.
Inequality is something that will always exist because everyone is different. If everyone was equal and had equal value then society would collapse. You wouldn't have any motive to do anything.
Maybe pigs will fly one day
People are not property. If you are poor, you might have to work in explotative conditions.
People are not free agents,this is free market propaganda. The world has resources, and technology,and we have people who can do work. This generates wealth. Just because you own a company does not mean that you have the moral right to the profit. In a free society,such exploitation would be stopped.
You are right that certain things will always remain scarce,even in a post-scarcity society with nano-replication technology. And it is possible that we will see a limited kind of capitalism,where all basic needs are covered,and many that we now consider luxuries, and we trade attention and information.
However, freely sharing attention and information is much to be preferred.
Placing things in a value system and making profits from it devalues it.
What would you rather want,get attention because someone likes you or finds you interesting, or buy the attention?
You are misconstruing my concept of inequality. I am talking about economic inequality, and social inequality , in other words, the absence of oppression, not that everyone needs exactly the same amount of resources at all times.
Since we are heading for post-scarcity, everyone can live in luxury.
My comment about google and facebook was a sarcastic joke, but I do believe that in a anarcho-capitalist world,we might see companies in armed conflict,and probably executions of workers that protest or tries to forcibly take over the means of production.
Believing anything else is hopelessly naive.
I just love your signature, and I enjoyed reading you as always, I had thsis time to comment on the signature though!
Thanks for the post, however your statements are frequently and clearly incorrect,and conclusions cherry picked to serve your obvious opinion. This just comes across as a propaganda piece. Cheers.
next time instead of wasting 2 lines to complain, write 2 lines with a logical counter argument