> 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.
> 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.