I see threads around here all the time bashing capitalism, when in fact we do not have a capitalistic system in place any more, we've bastardized it too much. There's no doubt that unchecked capitalism leads to abuses of customers and employees and competitors, but we've gone too far IMHO. We've got too damn many effin' politicians trying to make a name for themselves as crusaders for the public, proposing heavy handed new rules and laws that are costly and ineffective.
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Capitalism became a world-beater in the 1800’s, when it developed capabilities for endemic innovation. Societies that adopted the capitalist system gained unrivaled prosperity, enjoyed widespread job satisfaction, obtained productivity growth that was the marvel of the world and ended mass privation.
Now the capitalist system has been corrupted. The managerial state has assumed responsibility for looking after everything from the incomes of the middle class to the profitability of large corporations to industrial advancement. This system, however, is not capitalism, but rather an economic order that harks back to Bismarck in the late nineteenth century and Mussolini in the twentieth: corporatism.
In various ways, corporatism chokes off the dynamism that makes for engaging work, faster economic growth, and greater opportunity and inclusiveness. It maintains lethargic, wasteful, unproductive, and well-connected firms at the expense of dynamic newcomers and outsiders, and favors declared goals such as industrialization, economic development, and national greatness over individuals’ economic freedom and responsibility. Today, airlines, auto manufacturers, agricultural companies, media, investment banks, hedge funds, and much more has at some point been deemed too important to weather the free market on its own, receiving a helping hand from government in the name of the “public good.”
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It seems unlikely that so disastrous a system is sustainable. The corporatist model makes no sense to younger generations who grew up using the Internet, the world’s freest market for goods and ideas. The success and failure of firms on the Internet is the best advertisement for the free market: social networking Web sites, for example, rise and fall almost instantaneously, depending on how well they serve their customers.
Sites such as Friendster and MySpace sought extra profit by compromising the privacy of their users, and were instantly punished as users deserted them to relatively safer competitors like Facebook and Twitter. There was no need for government regulation to bring about this transition; in fact, had modern corporatist states attempted to do so, today they would be propping up MySpace with taxpayer dollars and campaigning on a promise to “reform” its privacy features.
The Internet, as a largely free marketplace for ideas, has not been kind to corporatism. People who grew up with its decentralization and free competition of ideas must find alien the idea of state support for large firms and industries. Many in the traditional media repeat the old line “What's good for Firm X is good for America,” but it is not likely to be seen trending on Twitter.
The legitimacy of corporatism is eroding along with the fiscal health of governments that have relied on it. If politicians cannot repeal corporatism, it will bury itself in debt and default, and a capitalist system could re-emerge from the discredited corporatist rubble. Then “capitalism” would again carry its true meaning, rather than the one attributed to it by corporatists seeking to hide behind it and socialists wanting to vilify it.
Blaming Capitalism for Corporatism - Edmund S. Phelps and Saifedean Ammous - Project Syndicate
snippet:
Capitalism became a world-beater in the 1800’s, when it developed capabilities for endemic innovation. Societies that adopted the capitalist system gained unrivaled prosperity, enjoyed widespread job satisfaction, obtained productivity growth that was the marvel of the world and ended mass privation.
Now the capitalist system has been corrupted. The managerial state has assumed responsibility for looking after everything from the incomes of the middle class to the profitability of large corporations to industrial advancement. This system, however, is not capitalism, but rather an economic order that harks back to Bismarck in the late nineteenth century and Mussolini in the twentieth: corporatism.
In various ways, corporatism chokes off the dynamism that makes for engaging work, faster economic growth, and greater opportunity and inclusiveness. It maintains lethargic, wasteful, unproductive, and well-connected firms at the expense of dynamic newcomers and outsiders, and favors declared goals such as industrialization, economic development, and national greatness over individuals’ economic freedom and responsibility. Today, airlines, auto manufacturers, agricultural companies, media, investment banks, hedge funds, and much more has at some point been deemed too important to weather the free market on its own, receiving a helping hand from government in the name of the “public good.”
.
.
.
snippet:
It seems unlikely that so disastrous a system is sustainable. The corporatist model makes no sense to younger generations who grew up using the Internet, the world’s freest market for goods and ideas. The success and failure of firms on the Internet is the best advertisement for the free market: social networking Web sites, for example, rise and fall almost instantaneously, depending on how well they serve their customers.
Sites such as Friendster and MySpace sought extra profit by compromising the privacy of their users, and were instantly punished as users deserted them to relatively safer competitors like Facebook and Twitter. There was no need for government regulation to bring about this transition; in fact, had modern corporatist states attempted to do so, today they would be propping up MySpace with taxpayer dollars and campaigning on a promise to “reform” its privacy features.
The Internet, as a largely free marketplace for ideas, has not been kind to corporatism. People who grew up with its decentralization and free competition of ideas must find alien the idea of state support for large firms and industries. Many in the traditional media repeat the old line “What's good for Firm X is good for America,” but it is not likely to be seen trending on Twitter.
The legitimacy of corporatism is eroding along with the fiscal health of governments that have relied on it. If politicians cannot repeal corporatism, it will bury itself in debt and default, and a capitalist system could re-emerge from the discredited corporatist rubble. Then “capitalism” would again carry its true meaning, rather than the one attributed to it by corporatists seeking to hide behind it and socialists wanting to vilify it.
Blaming Capitalism for Corporatism - Edmund S. Phelps and Saifedean Ammous - Project Syndicate
