[thepp1983]

> Crony capitalism is an economy in which businesses thrive not as a result of risk, but rather as a return on money amassed through a nexus between a business class and the political class.

No crony capitalism is not a feature of capitalism. Crony capitalism is a feature of corporatism. You clearly don't understand the terms you are using.

China is a totalitarian state that as long as those businesses keep in line and bring enough benefit to the state (which is run by wealthy elites). Businesses are allowed to exist if they don't challenge this status quo. In China an individual has no property rights unlike most of the Anglo-sphere. This is because property rights are an important pre-requisite to many of the other rights we enjoy in the western world.

[dragonwriter]

> No crony capitalism is not a feature of capitalism.

Yes, it's a feature of the real world system for which the term capitalism was coined by it's 19th Century critics, and it's been a prominent feature of every real example (including, to a varying extent, the modern mixed economies that have completely replaced the original system named “capitalism”, but retain significant elements of its structure, and are often referred to as “capitalism”.)

It may not be a feature of the incoherent and unworkable “ideal” capitalism dreamed up as a defense after the criticism in which “capitalism” was named, but that fantasy has little relevance to anything.

> Crony capitalism is a feature of corporatism.

No, it's not. Capitalism, crony or otherwise, isn't an essential feature or corporatism, though some versions of corporatism have encompassed elements of capitalism though sometimes at a fairly superficial level.

It's true that corporatism provides strong opportunities for cronyism, though.

[thepp1983]

> Yes, it's a feature of the real world system for which the term capitalism was coined by it's 19th Century critics, and it's been a prominent feature of every real example (including, to a varying extent, the modern mixed economies that have completely replaced the original system named “capitalism”, but retain significant elements of its structure, and are often referred to as “capitalism”.)

Capitalism isn't really a system. It is just what comes about if people are allowed to trade freely and property rights are protected by the government/law enforcement. It is now recognised as an economic system.

I am not really wanting to get into a debate about Marxism. However the ideas that have spawed from Marxism probably killed 100 million people last century. So I don't really give much credence to them and you aren't going to convince me otherwise.

The mixed economies we have in Europe are frankly shite if you want to create your own business. In the UK I get taxed 4 times. I get have:

1. Corporation tax

2. Tax on withdrawing dividends

3. VAT Tax

4. Income tax.

Then if I employ other people full time. I have to setup a pension scheme because the Government (through collusion) bailed out the banking system and made everyone's state pensions worthless, which requires me employing more people I can't afford (as I am a one man band) to manage that. This has created the rise of more evil things like zero day contracts and the gig economy in the UK.

This means it is impossible in some circumstances to enter the market and grow if you are a smaller business because simply the overheads are too high. So there really isn't an open or competitive market.

So they aren't really capitalism either.

> It may not be a feature of the incoherent and unworkable “ideal” capitalism dreamed up as a defense after the criticism in which “capitalism” was named, but that fantasy has little relevance to anything.

I have no idea what you are talking about. Please be specific.

>No, it's not. Capitalism, crony or otherwise, isn't an essential feature or corporatism, though some versions of corporatism have encompassed elements of capitalism though sometimes at a fairly superficial level.

Err. I never said that. I originally said that capitalism wasn't corporatism. Crony capitalism isn't really capitalism because capitalism requires competitive markets.

"Crony capitalism is an economy in which businesses thrive not as a result of risk, but rather as a return on money amassed through a nexus between a business class and the political class."

This implies there isn't a competitive market. Therefore it isn't capitalism.

[crankylinuxuser]

> I am not really wanting to get into a debate about Marxism. However the ideas that have spawed from Marxism probably killed 100 million people last century. So I don't really give much credence to them and you aren't going to convince me otherwise.

I don't believe anyone mentioned Marxism or Communism anywhere in this thread. But no matter...

I'd love to hear an analysis of all deaths that capitalism has caused. And yes, I'm counting wars over resources, starvation, lack of medical care.. You know, the same way capitalists count against communists. Lets compare apples to apples.

And for a statement: I don't believe communism is a way forward. It's a 200 year old idea, that when it was implemented multiple times, has ugly failure modes. And.. the citizens end up trading one master (capitalist) for another (communist overseer).

The rest of this "Crony" vs "Corporate" seems like a word definition war. How about some good definitions before we move on.

[thepp1983]

Critiques of Capitalism was specifically mentioned, Marx is pretty much the most influential one.

Capitalism has brought a huge population of the world out of poverty in the last century.

Wars over resources isn't capitalism, most starvation last century was caused by communism. Lack of medical care, I have no idea what this has to do with free trade and property rights. On the subject of healthcare, I live in the UK and the NHS fails to deliver adequate care and constantly doesn't meet targets, even though there is an ever increasing amount of tax payers money invested in it. So social healthcare doesn't work and the NHS is probably one of the better examples in the world.

Capitalism is just the results of free trade and property rights.

> And.. the citizens end up trading one master (capitalist) for another (communist overseer).

What are you talking about? If you live in a capitalist system in the west you have individual rights and property rights. Nobody is your master, anyone can start their own business and be their own boss.

If you wanna work for a large megacorp so be it. Not for me, I started my own small IT business. I make enough monthly to pay myself a decent pension (funded by myself), my own healthcare and buy myself property next year (just a regular house nothing fancy but it is mine, I won't be renting anymore if all goes well).

> The rest of this "Crony" vs Corporate" seems like a word definition war. How about some good definitions before we move on

I have given the correct definitions and have linked or quoted them in my replies. You can look them up, I have used the common definitions. Our other friend I have no idea what definitions he was using.

[crankylinuxuser]

> Critiques of Capitalism was specifically mentioned, Marx is pretty much the most influential one.

Again, one can critique a system (Capitalism) without forwarding some other system (Communism).

> Capitalism has brought a huge population of the world out of poverty in the last century.

And we can't even AB test this. We don't know how it would have fared with strong constitutional monarchies, or more democracy, or what-have-you.

This statement is a tautology. It sounds good to capitalists, but is effectively unprovable against other systems we have.

> Wars over resources isn't capitalism, most starvation last century was caused by communism. Lack of medical care, I have no idea what this has to do with free trade and property rights. On the subject of healthcare, I live in the UK and the NHS fails to deliver adequate care and constantly doesn't meet targets, even though there is an ever increasing amount of tax payers money invested in it. So social healthcare doesn't work and the NHS is probably one of the better examples in the world.

Again, when capitalists compare deaths, its deflected and obfuscated with other justifications that it isn't indeed capitalism that causes it. But as you ask, what does this have to do with "free trade and property rights"? Its because free trade and property rights are the initial conditions. Yet when we look at first and second derivatives of where those rules lead, it leads to the abuses and horrific uses of power. Communists have no corner on violence, btw. The US military was moved in multiple times to bust up worker protests and strikes... And they usually killed quite a few people. Again, 2nd derivative action.

And about NHS, "So social healthcare doesn't work and the NHS is probably one of the better examples in the world." Let me get this straight - -because 1 system has "failed" (your definition of failure, undefined), that NO social healthcare can work? Pretty sure there's a problem with that logic.

> Capitalism is just the results of free trade and property rights.

As initial conditions, sure. I'm talking about how those base rules expand and lead to logical rules from them. You've seen Conway's Game of Life? They are simple rules as well, but contain all sorts of emergent behavior. I'm only saying that the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and further derived rules of capitalism are not healthy and good for society.

I'm not positing communism. If anything, I would put forth worker cooperatives as a possible interim solution. That would change the dynamic of work from a dictatorship to that of democracy. Democracies aren't always better, but dictatorships are usually regarded as terrible things.

> If you wanna work for a large megacorp so be it. Not for me, I started my own small IT business. I make enough monthly to pay myself a decent pension (funded by myself), my own healthcare and buy myself property next year (just a regular house nothing fancy but it is mine, I won't be renting anymore if all goes well).

Maybe we aren't clear. When I talk about capitalists, I'm not taking of an IT worker, retail worker, or even a middle manager. I'm talking of the people/organizations that own the bulk of property and/or own most the money or resources. I'm talking "banking crisis, 2008" type of people/orgs. Those are the capitalists.

In the end, you may do better or worse than other IT workers. I hope you do well. But, the ugly truth is that you are (in the UK) fighting against others in your same boat, for the few scraps. And that fighting is what fractures us. We see the same with Uber (cab), that pits driver against driver, for the same few scraps.

[thepp1983]

TBH mate. It seems you are incapable of having a sensible discussion about any of this. You seem to use your own definitions to words that don't match up with any sensible term that can be found online anywhere and then claim I haven't defined a success criteria when I did. This will be my last post to you.

1. The deaths under communism (of which there were millions were directly caused by communism). In the Soviet Union, Land was taken from the peasants that had finally got themselves some property and those that protested were killed. The land was then given to those that didn't know how to farm it. Millions died.

In Maoist china there was "The great leap forward" again there was a massive famine because of Agricultural collectivisation. Part of this was the four pests campaign. Millions died, we are talking 25-40 million people.

I am not even counting things like the holodomore yet.

All of these were a direct consequences of the collectivisation and tyrannical communist system.

Your complaints about the negatives of capitalism are simply vagaries about secondary effects and the odd time that Western powers have been tyrannical. It is neither convincing or provides a base for sensible discussion. it is simply what-aboutery when you consider the number of people that perished. Also you are using the term capitalist incorrectly yet again.

As for the claim am obfuscating issues away. I can point directly to policies/order made by tyrants that led to the death or millions. In response I get vagaries back about secondary effects.

This sort of comparison is a complete nonsense.

2 Regarding the NHS and to quote you "your definition of failure, undefined". I had defined it. They had consistently missed targets for a number of years despite cash injections. Almost anyone sensible would say that was a failure.

3. Again more vagaries about secondary effects. This is how you fix those secondary effects, you put in sensible legislation / regulation. BTW the un-intended consequence of the "Four pest campaign" is that many well known insects that destroyed crops had no natural predators (in this case I believe it was sparrows IIRC). So the unintended consequence of a policy I can directly point that killed 25-40 million people, yet you present to be vagaries about health care and wars which maybe tangentially related to the economics of capitalism.

Read some history, read some philosophy and get your terminology correct please.

4.

> I'm talking of the people/organizations that own the bulk of property and/or own most the money or resources. I'm talking "banking crisis, 2008" type of people/orgs. Those are the capitalists.

You are using the term capitalists incorrectly yet again. A capitalist is some that simply believes in free trade, wage labour and the pre-requisites like individual rights and property rights. You mean a social political elite and banking cartels. BTW your views align more with Steve Bannon btw.

5. Thank you for the well wishes. I have taken my destiny into my own hands. I work freelance and my fortunes are wholly up to me. If it doesn't work out well there is a whole world of opportunities out there I am a fairly smart person.