Capitalism Isn't Corporatism or CronyismI post this mostly as a service to DUmmies although I doubt more than a few have the focus and or mental capacity to read and understand this article without their lips and fingers going numb, if they can even find this part of the forum.
Here are a few selected highlights from the article linked in blue above.
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The question of “what is capitalism,†exactly – and likewise, regarding its main rivals, what is “statism,†“socialism,†“social democracy,†“communism,†“fascism,†or “corporatism†– shouldn’t be a matter of mere semantics. These are real political systems affecting real people, whether for good or ill. Political systems are free, un-free and oppressive, or mixed. We cannot legitimately make up terms or equivocate (i.e., switch meanings from one argument to the next, to evade or twist the logic) about these political systems.
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Most people today can’t even fathom (let alone endorse or advocate) a government that’s strictly limited to protecting each person’s right to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness. They assume a government must be controlled by some pressure group or another, in a “zero-sum game†of unavoidable exploitation – that “power†is ubiquitous and ineradicable, while the only question is who wields it and whose head gets bashed in. They say “timocracy†is rule by the military for the sole benefit of the military, that “plutocracy†is rule by the rich for the sole sake of the rich, that “socialism†is rule by labor for the sake only of labor, that “capitalism†is rule by capitalists (or Wall Street bankers) for the singular benefit of capitalists, and that “democracy†is rule by people (i.e., the majority) at the expense of the minority (true!).
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In fact, capitalism is the system of rights, liberty, civility, peace and non-sacrificial prosperity; it’s not the system of government that unjustly favors capitalists at others’ expense.
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Yes, there’s an alternative system that does entail the government unjustly ruling business and government, in turn, improperly controlled by business for business’s exclusive benefit (whether by subsidies, special favors, monopolies and franchises, tax breaks, or bailouts), even as it nominally still permits private property holdings: it’s called “corporatism†(sometimes, synonymously, “cronyism†or “fascismâ€). Corporatism was the system originated almost a century ago by the American “Progressives,†and later by Mussolini in Italy, Hitler in Germany, and Roosevelt in the U.S. (see his 1933 National Recovery Act, struck down by the Supreme Court in 1935 as unconstitutional because it was so corporatist). Corporatism goes hand-in-hand with statism, with abandonment of the fully free economy and adoption of the welfare-warfare state. Yet while many oppose cronyism, corporate welfare, and bailouts, they also endorse handouts to almost everyone else, including to the politically-valuable cronies so easily found among today’s labor union leaders, “green†companies, under-water homeowners, over-indebted college students, and war-happy munitions makers.
Lets review what is being said here:
Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power. (Benito Mussolini)
DUmmies never will understand. Fascism and Corporatism are what Obama is really all about. Read their posts. Fascism is what they are longing for, the government owning the means of production, picking winners and losers. They only think they are Socialists and Communists, actually they are Corporatists (or as Benito use to like to say, Fascists).
