The vacuous — "capitalism is better than corporatism" — distinction

© 2020 Peter Free

 

23 January 2020

 

 

Another example of lazy pundit-influencer thinking

 

A couple of days ago, I pointed to the self-defeating silliness of not understanding the fundamental "money" reason that the U.S. Military Industrial Complex repetitively does strategically stupid things.

 

Similarly today, I came across author Sam Jacobs accurately pointing to the Oligarchs in Control phenomenon — but mistaking why this outcome has occurred:

 

 

While ideas and even objects aren’t banned, they are increasingly difficult to come by, not due to government fiat, but due to the machinations of corporations hostile to the American values of freedom.

 

There is no way that America’s Founding Fathers would have sat on their hands while five corporations dominated American discourse and commerce.

 

Guns are not illegal, but private companies will make it increasingly difficult to buy, sell or own them – up to and including pulling your bank account.

 

You have all the freedom of speech you like, but prepare to be deplatformed or have your voice buried by large tech corporations with their thumb on the scale of American discourse.

 

The American shift from capitalism to corporatism has had dire unintended consequences:

 

Power has coalesced in both Washington, D.C. and many tech and media companies, such that the latter can undermine American rights and manipulate American political opinion with impunity, while the former abdicates its oath to defend the U.S. Constitution . . . .

 

© Sam Jacobs, Deplatformed: How Big Tech Companies & Corporate America Subvert the Second Amendment, Ammo.com (no date is associated with this essay at Ammo.com — that's ironic, given that Jacobs calls himself "Chief Historian")

 

 

If you follow Jacobs' included link (about corporatism) . . .

 

. . . you meet Matt Rogers' similarly short-circuited thinking:

 

 

Populist movements are rising up, decrying the “danger and destruction” of capitalism.

 

Capitalism, however, is not the culprit though. It is corporatism, the collective mentality of the corporation that views workers as interchangeable and customers as lacking options.

 

We do not live in a free market: we live in a market controlled by the interrelation between monolithic corporations, Wall Street and the Government. These three entities are what control our economic and professional opportunities, not capitalism.

 

Capitalism, specifically small business/entrepreneurial capitalism, is the antidote to this.

 

SB/E Capitalism is a structure that allows anyone to achieve their goals inside the system or outside of it. It’s a system that is not rigged to the highest bidder.

 

If the United States operated in a pure free market system, then the bailouts to Wall Street, the auto unions and the auto industry would not have happened. Those who engaged in reckless business practices would have been eaten up by the market & the void created by these organizations would have been filled with new entrants.

 

© 2017 Matt Rogers, Don’t Confuse Capitalism with Corporatism, International Policy Digest (15 September 2017)

 

 

Apparently . . .

 

It has escaped these two pundit-influencers that:

 

 

an armed and objectively-minded regulatory force

 

(anathema to both of them)

 

would be required to preserve

 

"small business/entrepreneurial capitalism"

 

from being crushed by the monopolization

 

that capitalism inevitably

 

(when historically viewed)

 

generates.

 

 

Both pundits bemoan a historically demonstrated trend, without recognizing that their own libertarian principles — combined with simple economics — make the Oligarchic End State inevitable.

 

 

The moral? — When fundamental causes escape unseen . . .

 

. . . we cannot come up with solutions that produce (or tend to produce) the outcomes that we wish.

 

Instead of displaying insight, humanity keeps deluding itself. We ignore easily available evidence in favor of repetitively disproven, simplistic ideologies.

 

An alien species might conclude that we are stupid.

 

Whether this is Tragedy — or merely motivation to sigh in passing geological time — depends upon one's temporal and philosophical perspectives.