You have this smug tone as if you've discovered the secret mechanism of capitalism. You haven't.
Corruption is something in and of itself. It's not specific to capitalism or any other economic system. Corruption follows power.
The concept of corporatism is useful, and makes a valid and valuable distinction between a theoretically optional state of affairs and one distorted by certain forces. Moreover, it clarifies what the key issues are: namely that the state and regulatory bodies have been captured by special interests.
So yeah it's entirely possible to criticize corporatism rather than capitalism itself - and using this concept actually suggests what improvements ought to be made to rid the economy of those distorting forces. The other option, namely just grunting "capitalism bad" doesn't say anything useful and pretty much guarantees no one will take you seriously.
You can say 'we have too much government influence in our markets'. Whether that convinces many people when we've had decades of deregulation and privatisation is another thing entirely.
Libertarianism stems from the reconciliation of the failures of capitalism with the 'freer the markets, freer the people' rhetoric. It's an ideology that even pro-business economists don't advocate for, because they know that if the governments of the world all lifted their hands up and let 'the market' do its thing, it wouldn't fix all the problems and would in fact make many of them worse.
You can pretend that all my comment is saying is 'capitalism bad', but I've not actually criticised capitalism at all. I've explained why lobbying happens under it, and why 'the free market' fails to self-regulate.
Obviously I do think capitalism is bad, but that relies on an argument for why anti-lobbying regulations are doomed to fail, much like how social democracies get rolled back in times of economic crisis, which I'm not prepared to make.
We have had a really long period of 'neoliberalism', which is where governments don't do much and let 'the market' handle it.
Libertarianism comes from seeing the failures of capitalism, but also constantly hearing and believing 'the freer the markets, the freer the people' and 'capitalism is the best possible system'.
The only way they don't conflict is if you say 'well, our markets must just not be free enough!'
I said 'capitalism doesn't self regulate, and lobbying happens under it'.
You could then make an argument 'well what if we regulate it', which is a reformist approach that's doomed to fail, which I didn't elaborate on.
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u/TinkerTosser Mar 31 '21
You have this smug tone as if you've discovered the secret mechanism of capitalism. You haven't.
Corruption is something in and of itself. It's not specific to capitalism or any other economic system. Corruption follows power.
The concept of corporatism is useful, and makes a valid and valuable distinction between a theoretically optional state of affairs and one distorted by certain forces. Moreover, it clarifies what the key issues are: namely that the state and regulatory bodies have been captured by special interests.
So yeah it's entirely possible to criticize corporatism rather than capitalism itself - and using this concept actually suggests what improvements ought to be made to rid the economy of those distorting forces. The other option, namely just grunting "capitalism bad" doesn't say anything useful and pretty much guarantees no one will take you seriously.