Posted on 07/01/2014 7:42:29 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Free Markets Killed Capitalism: Ayn Rand, Ronald Reagan, Wal-Mart, Amazon and the 1 Percent’s Sick Triumph Over Us All
Monopoly is back: Barry Lynn on the concentration of American economic power -- and how we can restore fairness
Barry C. Lynn is a senior fellow at the New America Foundation and the author of two important books, “End of the Line” and ”Cornered,” the latter of which describes the dramatic return of monopoly to the American landscape. Both books had a big effect on me when they appeared, as did Lynn’s periodic articles in Harper’s Magazine describing the concentration of economic power in all sorts of different industries. One of the reasons his books startled me is the weird silence of virtually all our other popular economic writers on the subject. Monopoly is back, in a massive way, and yet it seems as though even liberals often have trouble talking about it. If we’re really going to do something about inequality, however, it’s time we looked this thing in the face.
Barry Lynn and I sat down and talked it over last week. What follows is an edited transcript of our conversation.
Monopoly: It sounds like a very old-fashioned problem. It sounds like an economic issue from the 19th century. Is it still a problem today?
Yes, absolutely, a huge problem. The American economy is more concentrated today than it’s been in more than a century, since the days of the plutocrats. Pretty much every sector of the economy is dominated by a few Goliaths, sometimes a single dominant corporation. And this poses immense economic and political dangers, to growth and the quality of our jobs, and to our democracy itself.
(Excerpt) Read more at salon.com ...
Oy Veh Ping.
Salon still publishing?
Another WSJ lefty that got the boot post-Reagan. Socialism dies hard, doesn’t it.
Free markets is what we need, not “capitalism”. Conservatives should favor free markets over “big business” any day.
“Pretty much every sector of the economy is dominated by a few Goliaths, sometimes a single dominant corporation.”
OK. Let’s say this is true, and the left fears a few Goliath corporations that control too much. So how in the world do they equate that with believing all will be better if the economy is dominated by a SOLE mega-Goliath, AKA the federal government? I’m all for breaking up big companies that use their crony capitalist connections with government to destroy competition, but putting faith in even bigger government to fix it all is doubling down on stupid.
We can’t have vibrant smaller companies when the huge corporations are the only ones capable of dealing with all the laws and red tape. Those laws protect the huge multinationals from competition.
Salon, The shampoo of objective journalism.
Wipe, flush, repeat.
I live in a neighborhood that works for a living, I have yet to meet a 1%’er.
Scouts Out! Cavalry Ho!
Bingo.
All my life I was trained to like Capitalism. Hey, it’s the opposite of Communism, right? It’s what American is all about, right?
Turns out — not so much. Capitalism, rightly understood, only exists when Big Government colludes with Big Business. All the regulations, the tax policy, the tariffs, etc. are written by lobbyists to help Government get bigger and help business get bigger. The old “Military-Industrial Complex”? It’s not just “military”: it’s “government”. That joining of forces is what strangles the Middle Class.
With an actual Free Market, you have actual people running actual businesses. That’s where the Middle Class comes from.
I’ll support Free Markets any day of the week. But not Capitalism. I say that Capitalism and Socialism all inevitably end up as Fascism, which is what we have here in the USA.
There’s no problem with “big business”, nor is there any real threat from monopolies either... Unless they are government-enforced. A natural monopoly in a free market is either efficiently deploying resources to provide value, or it is not and will be outmaneuvered by a startup competitor. It’s not the size of the company that matters as much as the barriers to entry they erect with the help of government. Drop the artificial barriers and most if not all monopolies are temporary.
I think you have your own definition of capitalism.
We don’t have free markets, we have a corporist system.
Large firm partner with the Fedgov in order to drive out competition.
The whole US Chamber of Commerce is in collusion with the government to make policies that benefit some companies at the expense of their competitors. Like being pro-amnesty.
All you’re doing is accepting the author’s premise.
bump
All directly traceable to our Federal Reserve, fiat money, and the nanny-state. Oh, and by the way, that's NOT capitalism.
I think it’s the opposite of the authors premise.
Capitalism and corporate-government collusion has killed off the free markets. I think Clear Case Guy feels the same way.
Capitalism is a word invented by Marx, so it has always been a loaded term. Regardless, You should get the real definition of capitalism. capitalism IS free-markets. Whatever you are thinking of is not "capitalism."
Not mine alone.
Look at stock market regulations, auto industry regulations, airline regulations, energy, education, healthcare.
Can any big business exist without a heavy layer of government control and oversight? I say that this is exactly capitalism. Can you point to billionaires or Fortune 500 companies that are not directly in bed with the government?
I look for Free Markets, and I find none. I look at big business and I find Big Government calling the shots and telling us that they need to smooth out the inequalities of “Capitalism”.
The “solution” is actually the “problem”.
Where do you find “Capitalism” devoid of government control?
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