We have not been a capitalist society now for many years and crony-capitalism, the term the media has adopted, is really a disguise for what is in reality, one or a combination of the three primary entities, socialism, fascism and communism, referred to collectively as Statism by some economists.
There are several methods involving government revenue to create massive levels of redistribution of wealth required for a fascist system to come into existence. Whereas Communism uses direct ownership of the means of production to get the money to the centralized political point, Fascism uses taxes, fines and regulatory fees to achieve this. What makes a country more socialist or fascist depends primarily on the level of militarization and the police state apparatus; the later requiring oppressive levels to effectuate the collection of the higher levels of taxation, regulations, and controls to maintain the flow of money from the Citizens via the redistribution of wealth into a centralized political point, a/k/a the U.S. Treasury Department in the case of the United States. It is then divvied up to special interests based on political influences such as campaign contributions, lobbying, and fund-raising efforts. Then you have the massive bureaucracy administering and overseeing all the redistribution of wealth schemes.
Many believe because there are private sector companies involved in our system we have capitalism. Perhaps to some small degree, but our money isn’t even free market derived anymore and many of our most prominent corporations are to one portion or another government contractors, negating the positive effects that capitalism would have on our society. The more the government intervenes in the market, the more the effects of capitalism are negated. Hence, the term in The Wealth of Nations “unfetters” free markets, referring to capitalism, meaning lacking government interventions.
Grant you that the law and corporations are in collusion, but without the laws mandating the various social policies, the corporations would be much less powerful because it is the government interventions that grant them the benefits or subsidies. We have to have trade and free enterprise, but we are better off without the government interventions. Every social democracy around the world is having essentially the same problems the United States is having because all the nation-states are essentially doing the same things. We have long understood why socialism, fascism, and communism (Statism) don’t work, yet it is the nation-state that promotes it, surely not capitalism in and of itself. A true capitalist would never want government interventions, but statists love them.
One should always keep in mind that libertarian capitalism promotes self-discipline and the nation-state promotes authoritarian discipline. You must decide which one do you want to teach your children and that the enemies of liberty are almost always those granted privileges or benefits by the nation-state.
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Jurists 4 Justice; a key to civil society 