On Jun 19, 2014, at 6:40 AM, Louis Proyect <[email protected]> wrote: > NY Times, June 19 2014 > Why We’re All Crony Capitalists, Like It or Not > by Neil Irwin > > > But when you dive into the debate, it also offers something else: A > fascinating case study in how modern economies really work, and the ways > big business and big government are inevitably intertwined in ways that > believers in free markets may not like — but may not be able to avoid. > In short, we’re all crony capitalists, whether we like it or not. > > [snip]
========= Clearly, Mr. Irwin did not read the link/review you posted on 4/29; nor does he indicate any familiarity with the arguments of the texts mentioned: "Recently, there has been a strong recent resurgence on the left in emphasizing the way the state, through law, regulation, and public policy, necessarily structures markets. In this telling there is no such thing as a “free” market, just different choices about how to structure markets fundamentally based in politics and power. The idea of a “free” market is a vacuous, question-begging abstraction, invoked to defend the status quo or the interests of the wealthy. (A quick look at the titles of current academic works like The Illusion of Free Markets, The Myth of Ownership, and The Progressive Assault on Laissez Faire give a sense of the argument.)" > > There’s a principled libertarian case to be made that this world we live > in of big companies and big governments working hand in hand stifles > competition and makes consumers worse off. It is less clear that the > current push to get rid of the Export-Import Bank would do much of > anything to change that. ========= And every principled case that’s been made has been deconstructed by other principled arguments, by people who’d never heard of Derrida or his fellow travelers. But I guess some people want to argue about phlogiston and the aether while the planet keeps getting weirdly warmer. Crony capitalism is a redundancy. E. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
