Example of the latter: A magazine article I read once described the early days of Zapata Corp., a firm founded by George H.W. Bush and colleague Hugh Liedtke in the 1950's, old classmates from Yale who'd come west to help colonize Texas for the Ivy League. (Another day, I'd sat in an airliner and listened to a fellow passenger explain how his west Texas congressman had been pitched by a Yale faculty member before the congressman left Yale to move out West to, as it was phrased by my interlocutor, improve the quality of congressional representation by running for Congress as soon as he felt able to do so. Funny thing about that .... that congressman, Bush 41, and (my former) Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee all attended Yale .... then came to Texas to run for public office, among other things. I might have to check on the total number of Texas congressmen who've been "processed" and indoctrinated by Ivy League privilege academies.
In any case, while Bush 41 was still at Zapata Corp., he and Liedtke happened to attend a cocktail party of very wealthy people ..... and there they were offered a drilling deal. I don't remember where the deal was, I would assume it was somewhere in Texas, and it was a 50-well proposition. Which for me was a showstopper. A 50-well deal?! I'm used to thinking of "deals" as being a one- or two-well deal, followon wells being contingent on technical success and a lot of other things. But 50 wells? That was exorbitant, absolutely a huge deal, with entailed investment in the $20-50 million range depending on where the wells were to be located (lower costs in some parts of onshore Texas, much higher costs in South Texas, higher still offshore in Texas state waters, and still higher again if they were to be in the deeper parts of the Fort Worth or Midland Basins). And this deal was being passed around at a Texas cocktail party for Ivy League ring-knockers as if it were a canape platter. That begins to characterize both the deal and the gathering. This was serious favor-currying and enrichment for the junior members of the Permanent Ruling Class. (Bush 41 was Sen. Prescott Bush's son, remember; "Pressy" was still sitting in Congress as 41 clinked glasses and graduation rings and exchanged the secret Bonesman handshake at a party in neocolonial Texas.)
I seized on that episode as an example of how the PRC gets along and goes along and enjoys entree to wealth-building opportunities unavailable, and even inconceivable, to non-members. It is quite precisely what is meant by "crony capitalism".
So-called “crony capitalism” is misnamed. It should be called simply “cronyism”; capitalism has nothing to do with it. In fact, it’s the antithesis of capitalism — bringing government in to take sides, to pick winners and losers, and to grant or withdraw favors.
This misnomer is no accident. The label “crony capitalism” is an Alinsky-like trick of the left to try to discredit capitalism in general.