An excerpt from my talk to the John Locke Foundation in Raleigh, North Carolina. (Full presentation is available through the preceding link.)
Cronyism vs. Free Market Capitalism
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An excerpt from my talk to the John Locke Foundation in Raleigh, North Carolina. (Full presentation is available through the preceding link.)
Hello Mr. Palmer.
I recently read your intro and two essays from your text “The Morality of Capitalism.” I found them interesting and frustrating, probably the same way a staunch advocate of capitalism feels when reading a scathing critique of the system.
One point/question:
It seems that our market system lends itself to cronyism, and that to attempt to separate the two is a bit of wishful thinking. Marx wrote “The necessary result of competition is the accumulation of capital in a few hands.” History, time after time after time, verifies that assertion. Look at the internet today- after twenty or so years of existence on a mass market scale, a handful of giants control a huge percentage of it: google, yahoo, facebook, etc. It happened with railroad companies, big oil, banks, and on and on and on.
I guess my question is: this free market you speak of, when has it actually existed? Can I get a time span of years that you can show me a market functioning free of government interference or cronyism of any kind?