The World Bank pushes privatization of infrastructure, natural resource extraction, agricultural resources, etc.
the IBRD's Articles of Agreement explicitly identify "promoting private investment by private investors" as a goal. If that's not part and parcel with capitalism, I'm not really sure what is.
Perhaps you protest the other investments WB makes, which fall under its goal of producing "suitable conditions" for private investment (in practice, that means sucking governments dry until/unless they agree to privatization and occasionally ousting non-capitalist leaders from power.) But saying that capitalism stops being capitalism as soon as private investment starts controlling governmental decisions is just defining your way out of a very real and substantive critique of capitalism. Reality and real problems don't go away just because you're being pedantic about the definition of capitalism.
The World Bank may not embody "your" capitalism. But by any reasonable definition that avoids this sort of No-True-Scotsman distinction, the World Bank is aggressively capitalist. And certainly the bankers describe themselves (earnestly!) as capitalists.
So instead of saying "that's not capitalism", we should discuss whether any system which deifies private investment will eventually end up with organizations like the World Bank. And how to curb those excesses.
(Also, the world bank is not really a central bank. If the World Bank is a central bank then we might as well call any very large bank a central bank as well. In both cases, there are analogies but also important distinctions.)
Would you not agree that distinguishing between free-market capitalism and crony-capitalism brings important value to the discussion?
The inclusion of government force or government collusion is hardly a secondary consideration. The ability to wield what is essentially a monopoly on force, is THE most important factor when discussing capitalism vs cronyism. The world bank is the physical embodiment of cronyism, and I maintain, not capitalism.
I think it's kind of BS that you can point to THE distinguishing factor between something I argue for and something I argue againsts and say "pedantics"...
> Would you not agree that distinguishing between free-market capitalism and crony-capitalism brings important value to the discussion?
As I said,
>> saying that capitalism stops being capitalism as soon as private investment starts controlling governmental decisions is just defining your way out of a very real and substantive critique of capitalism
Money can buy political power, and in a system that incentivizes profiteering, that political power will eventually be used to generate profit.
You call that cronyism. I claim it's the logical conclusion of human nature unfolding within an unabashed free market.
You're more than free to re-define terms, but it doesn't change the reality that free market systems invariably cycle through periods of cronyism.
Playing around with the definition of capitalism is terminally non-responsive to the claim that free markets, given enough time, invariably breed this style of cronyism.
It's like claiming that sugary/fatty foods can't cause coronary artery disease because heart disease is caused by plaque. Technically true, but literally everyone's response is going to be an eye-roll.
> The ability to wield what is essentially a monopoly on force
Ugh. There's no such thing as a "monopoly on force". It's literally the great equalizer among not just humans but all organisms.
You're more than free to go out and build an unbeatable military and take down the evil crony-(not?)-capitalist world order. Who's gonna stop you? If you can't or won't build up the resources and mind share to do so, well, welcome to reality.
> You call that cronyism. I claim it's the logical conclusion of human nature unfolding within an unabashed free market.
A free-market is reliant on government power to protect/enforce property rights. You claiming a system which strictly enforces property rights always leads to a system which disregards property rights is absurd.
Are you arguing that in order to keep people from wielding governmental power against others, we need to strengthen government? Really? Why not make it so government power being wielded is a non-issue?
> It's like claiming that sugary/fatty foods can't cause coronary artery disease because heart disease is caused by plaque. Technically true, but literally everyone's response is going to be an eye-roll.
A terrible analogy... What you're arguing is that a diet that avoids sugary/fatty foods will cause heart disease because people end up ignoring diets. That's not a good argument against dieting...
Your argument is logical but vacuous[1]. Mine is logical, and what's more, proceeds from assumptions that aren't oblivious to empirical observation.
> You claiming a system which strictly enforces property rights always leads to a system which disregards property rights is absurd.
My claim is that political power is dynamically allocated, not statically allocated. In free markets, money buys power. Power is then abused to rig the rules of the game.
So even if you start in an ideal free market state, you'll quickly converge to cronyism. in this sense, opposition to "crony-capitalism" and advocacy for "free market capitalism" is an inconsistent position. Again, not as a matter of your definitions and logical derivations. But as a matter of observed reality!!! If you definitions and derivations contradict reality, the problem is not with reality but with your model of reality.
> Are you arguing that in order to keep people from wielding governmental power against others, we need to strengthen government? Really?
No. Where do you find me advocating for "strengthen[ing] government" in this thread? In fact, I think my critique of the World Bank is most commonly read as a critique of how strong (certain) governments have become. But actually I don't have any strong ideological advocacy, and even the World Bank/IMF have benefits and drawbacks that aren't so easy to categorically praise or condemn in broad strokes (see: various other threads).
I'm not the one claiming a theory of utopia. I'm just pointing out the absurdity of make such a claim by carving out increasingly arbitrary and anti-empirical definitional distinctions.
> What you're arguing is...
What I'm arguing is that definitions and logical derivations exist in service to describing reality. You have these two things -- reality and the tools we use to model reality -- the wrong way around.
Again, stop arguing about definitions and logical derivations stemming from those definitions. Answer the claim that free markets beget cronyism as a matter of empirically observable fact. Anything else is vacuous.
> No. Where do you find me advocating for "strengthen[ing] government" in this thread?
Everytime you say "free markets beget cronyism" you're implying a less free-market would beget less cronyism. That claim strongly suggests a less free-market is preferable; the only way to regulate interpersonal cooperation is through growing government.
> Power is then abused to rig the rules of the game.
Then why is it vacuous to argue for limiting said power? You are correct, people will always work in their own self interest. If there is some super powerful tool for them to increase their fortune/profit/power of course they will use it. That's entirely the point.
Saying free-markets become less free overtime and eventually foster cronyism isn't an argument against free-markets; it's an illustration of their importance. Healthy eating and its advocates aren't less important because unhealthy people exist.
> Everytime you say "free markets beget cronyism" you're implying a less free-market would beget less cronyism
No, I'm not. I'm claiming that free markets sans cronyism aren't a steady state (or even exist), so distinguishing between "free market capitalism" and "crony capitalism" is anti-empirical.
> the only way to regulate interpersonal cooperation is through growing government
Ideology, marketing, religion, and non-state violence, for example, are all also powerful mechanisms.
Also, limiting government might actually INCREASE the power of government... and what's worse, someone else's government! This is particularly relevant in the case of the World Bank.
> Then why is it vacuous to argue for limiting said power?
See above. The choice might be between US gov't/corporate power and local governance. Limiting the power of local governments in the face of extremely powerful foreign governments and corporations doesn't actually reduce the power of government writ large.
> Saying free-markets become less free overtime and eventually foster cronyism
No, and if you re-read the thread, you'll notice that I'm not even making an argument against free markets. I'm making an argument against your distinction between "free market capitalism" and "crony capitalism". Again, the central claim from my original reply was:
>>>>> The World Bank may not embody "your" capitalism. But by any reasonable definition that avoids this sort of No-True-Scotsman distinction, the World Bank is aggressively capitalist.
I think you're now violently agreeing -- or at least you've stopped making any sort of coherent argument that crony capitalism is "not capitalism" in anything but a sort of vacuous sense.
As for the rest of your post, I don't get it. You're still just playing with definitions! Free markets aren't a cure-all for corruption, and your approach to corruption seems to be using definitions to bury your head in the sand. Seems dangerous.
If you're opposed to the World Bank, then you're opposed to an artifact of free market capitalism. It's that simple.
No, I'm not agreeing. The distinction between cronyism and free-market capitalism is important. You're claiming it isn't - I'm claiming it is. Simply:
Property rights = Free-market =/= Cronyism
It's like if I commented on an article about sodium and water exploding saying "water is generally pretty great, don't mix it with sodium though" then you respond with "don't be pedantic, water explodes."
Semantics are extremely important, especially in this arena. Never would have thought I'd get into an argument today with someone arguing against distinguishing between free-markets and cronyism... wow.
Acknowledging the presence of a force is not "playing with definitions"... unbelievable...
Free-markets without Cronyism doesn't actually exist in the real world... no matter how cute your definitions and logical derivations are, they're also vacuous.
If we're going to advocate for impossibilities, why not skip the free market middle man and simply advocate for universal happiness? Empirically dubious and we have no idea how to actually implement it in reality, but apparently that doesn't matter.
(Also, I've heard water does in fact exist without sodium. So, not analogous.)
Crony-capitalism is literally the opposite of a free-market! So, you think property rights are a made up impossibility? Advocating for them is a waste of time? Nothing lives on a spectrum? Don't care how you answer. This is a waste of my time.
> Crony-capitalism is literally the opposite of a free-market!
But it's what the capitalist system of property rights consistently produces in the real world.
> So, you think property rights are a made up impossibility?
No, they are made up but quite possible. The idealized free market the capitalist model of property rights is supposed to deliver is, OTOH, an impossibility (or, at any rate, an unstable condition unlikely to ever be achieved which would decay immediately if it was.)
> No... ignoring property rights consistently produces crony-capitalism.
No, the original capitalist system (that is, the dominant system of the mid-19th century system developed West for which critics coined the name “capitalism”) fully embraced the capitalist model of property rights—again, the capitalist model of such rights was defined by what was observed in that system as distinct from a other historical systems—and was deeply and pervasively characterizes by cronyism.
Now, if you have some other model of property rights in mind other than that embodied in the real historical system for which “capitalism” was coined as a label, you might argue have an argument that deviation from that model, such as the deviation seen in capitalism, produces cronyism. But you shouldn't confuse that model with capitalism.
I would be careful of suggesting the idea of property you're referring to is somehow "the original capitalist system". Many economic and political theorists in the mid 19th century and earlier talked about property rights in the terms I'm referring to - these were also capitalists.
“Propriété et loi.” Originally published in the 15 May 1848 issue of "Le Journal des économistes", Frederic Bastiat (hardly some obscure, sideline thinker) wrote:
> Economists consider that property, like the person, is a providential fact. The law does not give existence to one any more than to the other. Property is a necessary consequence of the constitution of man.
He continues:
> It is so true that property predates the law that it is acknowledged even by primitive people who have no laws or at least no written laws. When a savage has devoted his work to building himself a hut, no one disputes his possession or ownership of it. Doubtless another savage who is stronger than he can drive him out but not without angering and alarming the entire tribe. It is actually this abuse of strength that gives rise to association, agreement, and the law, which places public force in the service of property. Therefore the law arises out of property, a far cry from property arising from law.
Point being, the property rights I'm referring to - the property rights that the vast majority of free-market advocates speak about - have been considered and thought about for ages. I'm not coining a new label.
More accurately, the capitalist system of property rights (not the only structure of property rights imaginable) is included in (but not equivalent to) the capitalist concept of a “free market”; that system of rights (even without the other components of a “free market”) also naturally (when combined, as it always is with real societies, with self-interest) produces (among other problems) cronyism.
Perhaps you mean anarchocapitalism or some libertarian strain of capitalism, because, otherwise, this is straight out of the modern capitalism playbook.
Are there good examples of non-crony capitalism, when we're discussing markets and populations at this scale? This sounds an awful lot like "authoritarian communism =/= communism".
I'm curious to see some of the historical examples in America, especially if there are TONS of them. Because when I think of "American capitalism at scale" in the old days the only thing I picture are the robber barons.
I said there were tons of examples historically and that America was one of them (and obviously not in every aspect... these types of things are always on spectrums and not devoid of anomalies)
