by Jeffrey Tucker at Daily Reckoning
It’s not capitalism. It’s not socialism. The new word we are hearing these days is the right word: corporatism.
That refers to the merger of industry and state into a unit with the purpose of achieving some grand visionary end, the liberty of individuals be damned. The word itself predates its successor, which is fascism.
But the “F” word has become totally incomprehensible and useless through misuse so there is clarity to be gained by discussing the older term.
Consider, as an obvious example, Big Pharma. It funds the regulators. It maintains a revolving door between corporate management and regulatory control. Government often funds drug development and rubber-stamps the results. Government further grants and enforces the patents.
Vaccines are indemnified from liability for harms. When consumers balk at shots, government imposes mandates, as we have seen. Further, pharma pays up to 75% of the advertising on evening television, which obviously buys both favorable coverage and silence on the downsides.
This is the very essence of corporatism. But it is not only this industry. It ever more affects tech, media, defense, labor, food, environment, public health and everything else. The big players have merged into a monolith, squeezing out the life of market dynamism.
The topic of corporatism is rarely discussed in any detail. People would rather…
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