Soupman wrote:realEAST wrote:coldfish wrote:I disagree that this is predatory capitalism. In any type of capitalist system, people would be creating teams and just filling up markets until there was no threat of teams leaving for different markets.
This is something worse and uglier. Corporatism or economic fascism where the government gets in bed with the wealthy private sector.
https://fee.org/articles/economic-fascism/
Nice to hear it
I tried to avoid using that term since I didn't want to engage in potentially day long political debate, but agree 100%.
More than familiar, part of my field (wo
w, first time I wrote this, now this sounds pretentious
Was "too big to fail" fascist? Where bailouts to major banks/investment firms/auto makers/etc fascist?
Socialism is the workers owning the means of production.
Capitalism is private ownership of the means of production.
No country is fully capitalist or socialist. Most western democracies are capitalist with some economic restrictions in place(antitrust laws).
What would you call the federal reserve systems controlling interest rates?
I think we speak from vastly different positions on one hand and things aren't as simple as you present them on the other hand.
For once no country is or has ever been socialist in the true meaning of the word (and least of them Soviet Union, just to be clear on it).
Closest to it came Sweeden when they had plan to gradually switch to completely publicly owned economy in true sense of the word - not by state but by citizens/workers holding small individual shares of companies they work in.
(see how in the end true, proper socialism, capitalism and democracy all blend into the one thing).
To make the long story short, there wasn't "political courage" to finally make such a move (one great failure by O. Palme), but they opted for further privatization - guess what: they had major economic crisis at the beginning of the 90s.
They are too rich and their public sector is still quite strong, but as privatization takes even greater steps, their economic results are worsening, although still very good (worth noting, there is strong left-green coalition in the seat for a while now, with only one, short period of interuption in eatly 80s that didn't end up well).
Western Europe (including Italy and Spain) itself is quite a bit different from state to state, and we are not even speaking about East Europe.
But todays neoliberal capitalism and socialism can't be farther apart - and in it's most complete, most extreme version, neoliberal capitalism as represent by Republican party even way before Trump and even by bigger, central part of Democrat party (Hilary's circles) - limiting only to USA - can be closely compared and almost equated with corporativism. (there are differences, but they are conditioned historically, more than structurally)
It's not limited only to owning means of production (and what would publicly owned mean - by state or by workers - great differance, as I lean towards latter), but also to treatment of basic public goods and services as are education, health system and welfare system, concessions on land etc.
I know the main kick on government from neoliberal circles is it's inefficieny, which on one hand is completely false, especially in big, rich countries, as backed by numerous studies in multiple time frames. (and where BDP isn't only and ultimate parametre, although it backs it too in most cases).
On the other hand, governments usually aren't efficient exactly when they have close ties to big business, as they cater policies towards it and not benefit of citizens, apart from "holified" circle - and that is main trait of corporativism.
To answer your questions, they also have two sides: on one hand those measures can't be approved knowing what was the cause of the crash of banking system for ex., but at the same time if say moto industry wasn't subsidized the price wouldn't be paid by owners and manages who ran the companies (and banks for that matter) in the ground, but thousends of workers, which would consequentialy further weaken economy.
Practice of bank managers to pay themselves huge bonuses after they had been bailed out by hunderds of bilions of dollars speaks enough of their case.
That is an example of state favoring (extremly corrupt) private sector (which in itself is highly problematic), so yes, it could be labeled corporativism.
I think moto industry is a bit more layerd problem, and that call in the end I can understand.
Point is, something isn't corporativist per se, as seen above, or like central banks controling intrest rates, but in which way they are applied is what determines the character.
The very notion of democracy is questionable in it's alleged bastion (just see how and why Sanders was prevented from being Democrat candidat at elections; all that happening in basically bi partisian system), let alone in most of the other world.
Having that in mind and blaiming government for it's inefficiency is a bit hypocrite imo, since ties to big business is exactly what makes it corrupt and inefficiet in first place, yet those same people are spring of neoliberal ideology now days. So I see it as more a means to an end than true belief.
(Interesting marker here are ties between very conservative church organizations and so called neoliberal circles)
Now I went on a writing spree, I hope I covered it all, it is tricky typing it on a cell.