It has. But it’s not the endgame. Free market capitalism, with the free movement of prices is what our economy needs. In a sped up world innovators may be able to make end runs around the crony capitalist system. They may overwhelm the state/corporate dynamic. But as we wrote over the weekend, it will take a lot of work.
Currently congresspeople and their staffs have 75% of their premiums paid for by the taxpayer. The plans they enjoy are also top notch. Top top notch.
But because of the way Obamacare was written, the law we needed to pass before we knew what was in it, lawmakers and their aides are about to be thrown into the vortex of the Obamacare healthcare “exchanges.” And guess what? They don’t wan’t to go down the hole.
Now, it’s perfectly OK for the average American to deal with this nightmare.
An interview with friend of ACC Peter Schweizer on how crony capitalism infects a society and mutates the economy.
If society criminalizes large parts of the economy, of human activity, it obviously creates criminals. But if laws are straightforward and widely recognized by a society as being grounded in common sense, criminals are few and the cost to taxpayers is small(er). Everyday people also don’t feel like fat cat crony capitalists are manipulating the law for their benefit as there are few laws to manipulate.
Some thoughts on this from Milton Friedman.
Washington DC is indeed booming. Over the past 5 years billions and billions of tax dollars have been poured into the local economy. Contractors of all sorts fill the mirrored buildings surrounding DC. The roads are choked with commuters, many of whom are new transplants from the less prosperous regions of the country. The wealth of a nation has been aggregated in and around the Beltway. Money is here and millions are being “made.” (Really, being redistributed.)
First of all, end the Fed. Just had to say that. End it tomorrow. It is the source of the modern boom and bust cycle, extended the Great Depression, inflated the tech and housing bubbles, and has extended the Great Recession. (Some of its crimes.) Now “Mr. let’s end Glass-Steagall and blow up the world with derivatives” is unofficially throwing his hat in the ring for Fed Chairman. People of the world rejoice, a new dawn is breaking!
The Obama administration overstepped it’s partnership with the establishment media and now the other half of the partnership is flexing is muscles. Doug Wead rightly points out that the AP hasn’t been particularly interested in covering the surveillance of ordinary everyday citizens. That’s not a story. But if the AP is put in the cross hairs, then they care. It’s natural I suppose.
Everyone wants a piece of the taxpayer funded pie. The inventor of “The Whisper,” an inflatable car is no different. When billions were handed out from the Obama administration for “green” vehicles in the Whisper project (now updated as an SUV) was not picked up for funding. Now the inventor is miffed.
SOPA, PIPA, ACTA, CISPA, the freedom of the Internet is under assault from crony industry and governments. It’s about control. It is about the reining in of information. It is about restricting innovators and protecting dinosaur business models.
