[dragonwriter]

> 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".

[dovereconomics]

>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.

[dragonwriter]

> 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.

[pdeuchler]

By this argument we should just accept that "communism" involves the widespread murder of political enemies, as that has always happened in "communist" countries.