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- Cronyism: Rise of the Corporatist State, 1849–1929
This book is about the birth of the corporatist state in America. It did not occur instantaneously or even within a couple of years; it spanned the eight decades from the collapse of the Jacksonian Democrats in 1849 to the pervasive dominance of Wall Street and big business before the Great Depression. The evolution of the government into a powerful cartelizer of the economy—finance, transportation, manufacturing, labor, food, and drugs—required multiple stages of myriad special interests persistently lobbying to reduce competitive market pressures. It required cronyism: government intervention that benefits special interests at the expense of public interest.
Patrick is and assistant teaching professor of economics at the University of Tampa and Murray N. Rothbard Research Fellow at the Mises Institute. He completed his PhD in the Department of Economics at George Mason University.
By the close of the 1920s, business elites led by Wall Street had secured government enforcement of their cartels across banking, industry, transportation, and health.
Barred from rate associations after 1897, the railroads formed communities of interest by buying their competitors’ stock—cartels in a disguised form.
The Beef Trust, the pure-food coalition, and the American Medical Association: three campaigns waged in the name of public health.
