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 ...
I live in the SF Bay Area where many rich Liberals reside, many in tech. I never knew how someone who earned a living could ever be Liberal, but they are everywhere, PhD’s who laugh about Cheney and water boarding and squeal about Bush, even now, in the face of Obama’s multiple failures and scandals.
As a big ticket arbitrator, like the SEC, FDA...at 10% of current staffing levels. The world needs some laws, but self-serving crony “capitalist” nonsense. Regs just fund bureaucrats, it only hurts business and “saves” no one.
Our old pal Thomas (voting against their economic interests) Frank is back. His book “What’s The Matter With Kansas” was a pile of Marxist garbage.
It never occurs to people like Frank that the great majority of Americans like what corporations provide. Even most Republican-hating Dems wouldn't want to live in Frank's America.
The premise is fallacious...... capitalism is far from dead
It’s not big businesses colluding that was the problem in Atlas Shrugged. It was the cronyism. I don’t like the term “crony capitalism” because capital has nothing to do with it. It’s cronyism— the economics of “pull”— and then nothing else matters.
Even cartels, in a truly free economy, are doomed to fail. It’s only government with their laws and their courts and ultimately their guns...
This author claims to have read Atlas, yet proceeds to commit the very same errors as Wesley Mouch and the rest of the looters, and in doing so outs himself as a looter. The first clue is any time you you see someone emphasizing the difference between what “ordinary” people have, and what the very very wealthiest have. The “wealth gap” or the “income gap” or “income inequality” or whatever fashionable term they have at the moment.
If I’m an “ordinary” person making my way in the world... What conceivable difference does it make to me in my life what somebody else has in their life? Whether they earned it or inherited it or found it laying beside the road has absolutely zero effect on my life and my decisions. If they want to buy something I’m selling then it even has a beneficial effect on me— but beyond that, his wealth costs me nothing.
The difference— the gap— between rich and poor, or rich and less rich, or rich and anybody else... Is one of the more irrelevant measurements to ever try to make. Any time you hear that, it’s a moocher hoping to get your sanction and leverage your own envy against you by claiming to be looting someone else.
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