The worst, unchecked, crony cap Papuan is exactly the system for which the name "capitalism" was coined, and crony capitalism had been part of what the term had referred to -- and an element of all real-world systems with the name -- since the real-world nineteenth century system that features it was named "capitalism" by its critics.
Cronyism is central to capitalism, and you can't have one without the other.
Cronyism, referring to a system where incompetent agents are given special favors, doesn't survive in the free market - merciless competition destroys any underperfoming organization.
Cronyism only exists when competition doesn't work by means of a government. Get some politicians, create regulations, build a monopoly. No matter how uncompetitive it is, you're still a billionaire.
> Cronyism, referring to a system where incompetent agents are given special favors, doesn't survive in the free market
The "free market" in which that is a defensible claim is a counterfactual construct that is sometimes useful as a simplified analytic model, but fundamentally incompatible with the behavior of real human beings and conditions in the real world.
> merciless competition destroys any underperfoming organization.
In real unregulated markets, that may happen initially, and the most successful parties in that situation mercilessly move to lock-in advantages against future competitors by use their economic power they have as a result of that success to monopolize key inputs, preventing competition.
> Cronyism only exists when competition doesn't work by means of a government
Yes, and a particular, common, real-world version of cronyism by which government structures the economic regime to favor the interest of the capital-holding class was identified by its critics in the 19th Century, and given the name "capitalism".
>government structures the economic regime to favor the interest
That's it. If there's central planning(no matter to whom) it's socialism. And, regarding 'lock-in advantages', without a government-backed credit expansion, it'd be really difficult for companies to get as much market cap.
> If there's central planning(no matter to whom) it's socialism.
No, the dominant system of the developed world in the 19th Century that socialists reacted against and coined the word "capitalism" to describe isn't socialism.
By this argument we should just accept that "communism" involves the widespread murder of political enemies, as that has always happened in "communist" countries.
This reminds me of some people who pointed out that communism was never implemented and all the totalitarian regimes were still in the socialism phase. A phase which was obviously never going to be replaced with the communist utopia.
This is just a delay tactic. We all know what we talk about when we say "communism" and it's the same for "capitalism" - we mean the real-world, flawed implementation.
Anyone with a background on classical economics realizes the U.S is much closer to socialism than capitalism. The existence of 'prices' and greed doesn't imply it's capitalism.
> Anyone with a background on classical economics realizes the U.S is much closer to socialism than capitalism.
Anyone should recognize that the dominant system of the modern developed world is a hybrid retaining largely the capitalist structures and property regime, but adopting many strategies with origins in socialism (including advocated in the communism of Marx and Engels) for mitigating some of the effects for which 19th Century socialists criticized the dominant system of the developed world at that time, for which they coined the term "capitalism".
Its probably not particularly productive to argue about whether this synthesis is "closer" to socialism or capitalism.
Exactly. The US (and to a greater extent, the West) never really grew out of mercantilism... the "capitalism" only shines through when it's convenient propaganda (spreading democracy and capitalism, one bomb at a time!) or when there's vast amounts of money to be made in ethically dubious circumstances (like doing business with Nazis) and some sort of justification is needed.
Is Sweden a socialist country, according to your metrics? Government spending makes up just over half of their economy. We're somewhere between 35-38%, federal, state & local. I'll leave it at that.
If you are implying the US is somehow close to what neoliberal thinkers would propose, that couldn't be more wrong.
Neoliberalism doesn't mean watered down free-market liberalism. The term describes a certain movement in (classical) liberal thought which wanted to seperate itself from former thinkers primarily based on the time they where living in.
While those thinkers have little in common, they genuinely disliked a productive state (as in the production of goods or the delivery of a service), cartels, interventions in the price mechanism etc.
All of that is far away from what the US or European countries are currently doing.
At least in Europe it's also used as a meaningless buzzword to scare people who think that the prefix "neo" means evil.
Cronyism is central to capitalism, and you can't have one without the other.