Deregulation as crony capitalism
by ilene - August 20th, 2009 10:07 pm
Edward at Credit Writedowns had some interesting comments on the earlier post by Jesse at the Le Cafe.
Deregulation as crony capitalism
Courtesy of Edward Harrison at Credit Writedowns
Jesse of Jesse’s Café Américain posted on the important subject of deregulation in his last post, “Why the Austrian, Keynesian, Marxist, Monetarist, and Neo-Liberal Economists Are All Wrong.” In it, he opined that it is entirely wrong-headed to assume everything will be alright if we just let free markets work their magic. I want to take his thoughts one step further because I think there is a misperception about what the free market entails and why the deregulation movement went astray.
Kleptocracy defined
First, a framework.
Last March, I posted an article called “A populist interpretation of the latest Boom-Bust cycle” in which I used Jared’ Diamond’s viewpoint of stratified societies as Kleptocracies as a lens through which to understand the secular trends which have characterized the last generation of western economic history.
The corollary of this – and where I want to concentrate – is that advanced societies are not egalitarian. Some will de facto have more, and others will have less. Moreover, as Diamond asserts, this lack of equality becomes, in essence, a kleptocracy i.e. a reverse Robin Hood organization where the elites enrich themselves at the expense of the others.
This has been the reality in all advanced societies based on agriculture, manufacturing and services for the last 10,000-odd years. This social structure has been net beneficial to the societies employing it in comparison to more simple societies – a case of a rising tide lifting all boats. So, on some level, kleptocracy is nothing about which to get irate.
The problem is that not all kleptocracies are created equal. At some point, the ruling class overreaches in a way that subtracts from rather than adds to the overall…

Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
del.icio.us
Digg












Philip R. Davis is a founder Phil's Stock World, a stock and options trading site that teaches the art of options trading to newcomers and devises advanced strategies for expert traders...
Ilene is editor and affiliate program
coordinator for PSW. She manages the Favorites backup site
(