09/26/2014 - Financial Repression Leads To Crony Capitalism
American Thinker posted essay on the fusion of government & major corporations we have come to call “crony capitalism” .. the essay takes the position that crony capitalism evolves as the private sector’s creative powers gradually decay amidst a government intent on the confiscation & redistribution of wealth .. “As the political state is incapable of creating wealth, as wealth can only arise in the private sector, the very act of confiscation and redistribution of that private sector wealth severely inhibits the investment that sustains the private sector’s creation of it. The result is that the private sector’s creative powers gradually decay. The source of new wealth cut off, wealth depletes. This degradation can only be delayed, not abated, by some sort of crony capitalism in which the state attempts to force private investment either by mandates and penalties or giving special subsidies; by picking winners .. I’ve come to the conclusion that no matter how far left the political philosophy that guides political decisions, the net depletion of economic wealth to be distributed will always lead to some sort of crony capitalism. As wealth depletion continues from weak private investment, confiscatory taxation, restrictive labor laws and the like, the welfare state relies ever more heavily upon coercion, both social and legal, and upon economic subsidies to favored firms to sustain itself .. France exemplifies this system.”
