"Fascism should be more appropriately called Corporatism, because it is a merger of corporate and state power." -Benito Mussolini
"Fascism is capitalism in decay." -Vladimir Lenin
Chris Whalen's latest post hits a theme I've tried to highlight here at SkipGold -- the dangers that both big government and big business pose to the health and dynamism of the economy. The dangers of big government are more known, but large corporations can be just as threatening. They work hand-in-hand with government policymakers to enact legislation regarding rules and regulation, taxation, dollar policy, tariffs, etc. that effectively create a moat around their own business. Policies of the Federal Reserve favor the large Wall Street banks but are literally suffocating small community banks. Campaign contributions ensure this unfortunate dynamic.
Small and medium businesses are not as able to deal with the higher costs and red tape that all those policies impose. Growth is slowed. Innovation is throttled. Higher costs and taxes are paid by others (post HERE noting co's like GE pay nearly nothing in taxes). Democrats, of course, tend to favor big government and their big corporate donors. But even the GOP, while paying lip service to terms like "free markets" and "capitalism", unquestionably favor their big corporate donors over their smaller, less politically active competitors. Chris, in his "In Defense of Free Market Fundamentalism", has more:
The rapid commercialization of American society since WWI and the rise of the corporation as the dominant model in the global political economy raises many challenges for those who struggle to protect individual liberties. First and foremost it is necessary is to understand the distinction between true individual choice as economic actors and people being swept along by a consensus about economic policy that is molded by the public relations apparatus of government and large corporate enterprises...
Large corporations tend to avoid risk and over time try to control markets and even governments to protect their interests. While the vast majority of business people, who run smaller enterprises, are honest and support a civil society (and generate the majority of jobs), the captains of the largest corporations often take actions antithetical to a democratic society and their shareholders.
Far from being an achievement of the era of laissez faire economics, the rise of the large corporation is a throwback to the period of monarchism and tyranny before the industrial revolution...
Just as large, mature organization tend to lose the ability to innovate and thus destroy shareholder value, the economic thinking which celebrates big government and cartels in finance and industry is slowly killing the private sector in America and diminishing the rights of individuals. In the difficult debate over economic restructuring and renewal which must occur in the US over the next several years, we ought to begin with an assessment of elemental principles. Americans need to leave aside labels like left and right, and start asking basic questions about what mixture of policies will best enhance the economic and political lives of individuals.
Once we understand that many of the problems we face today as communities of individuals called nations come about due to concentrations of power in large governmental and corporate enterprises, and the corruption of these structures, then people on all sides of the supposed political debate are going to discover new common ground.
The entire piece is well worth the read.
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