[lbidircitkghd]

>anyone who's read economics 101 would tell you corporate monopolies are rarely result of unadulterated capitalism, but rather state corporatism

Corporatist despotism is the logical conclusion of any laissez-faire capitalist economy just as Stalinism is the logical conclusion of any Marxist economy. Businesses are sticky and over time will tend to clump together, for efficiency reasons, into larger businesses. Once these businesses reach critical mass, they start to have a significant amount of influence over politicians through lobbying and campaign contributions. They use this influence to do something called "regulatory hedging" whereby they can squeeze out competition and achieve monopoly through introducing complicated legal requirements that make it tough for the little guy to get ahead. The FDA and federal tax codes are good examples of this.

This will continue to happen time and again until we put in place good checks against businesses consolidating too much power. Of course, it's too late for that since we've already let them control our political system.

[Thriptic]

> This will continue to happen time and again until we put in place good checks against businesses consolidating too much power.

Wouldn't another fix be public financing of campaigns and a ban on contributing private money to elected officials in any capacity?

[iamcurious]

You can always transfer money from point A to point B, the only difference is how costly and transparent that transaction is is. Banning private contributions increases the cost but decreases the transparency.

[lbidircitkghd]

There's a significant competitive advantage to writing your own rules for the game you're playing in, so as long as that much power is concentrated in so few hands, businesses are going to find loopholes and other means of getting what they want. An example would be a business threatening to fire all their workers in a certain area and move somewhere else unless they were granted what they wanted. Boeing did that quite effectively just recently in the state of Washington and was able to get a massive, multi-billion dollar tax break. So now Washington taxpayers are essentially subsidizing the bottom line of an already hugely profitable business.

[SixSigma]

Some might suggest that imperialism is the highest stage of capitalism.

[TheOtherHobbes]

Or vice versa.

Imperialism is the goal, capitalism is the excuse.

[SixSigma]

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism

https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/