Cronyism and Corporatism

Tho Bishop joins David Gornoski on A Neighbor's Choice.

Whether we're talking public health or economic growth, the Chinese regime's love of intervention and centralization has led to one crisis after another.

The departed Al Davis, who owned the Oakland Raiders, was famous for saying, “Just win, baby.” But now the team's philosophy is this: “Just raid the taxpayers, baby.”

Michael Milken was a threat to the complacent Wall Street cartels established by the New Deal. So ambitious prosecutors like Rudy Giuliani saw an opportunity to get in good with Wall Street by taking him down.

The Edge of Democracy, a new Oscar-nominated documentary about Brazil, gets even basic facts wrong in pushing the idea that Brazil's corrupt and socialist politicians were the saviors of Brazilian democracy.

After very quickly becoming an advanced economy, South Korea is experiencing declining growth and labor productivity. The culprit, as usual, is government intervention in the market to favor certain interests.

There's a new kind of capitalism on the scene: "surveillance capitalism." It's drawn attention from across the political spectrum, but Left, Right, and center offer very different solutions to similar concerns. 

How much licensing requirements are designed to “protect” the health of the public, and how much to restrict competition, may be gauged from the fact that giving medical advice free without a license is rarely a legal offense. Only the sale of medical advice requires a license.

The conservative case against market freedom is based on the belief that if change disrupts the status quo in any way, or if companies impose cost reductions that result in a shifting of employment — or even some layoffs — then government should step in and take control.

Nothing short of an economic exorcism is needed in Zimbabwe. Looking at what President Mnangagwa has done so far, it doesn’t seem that Zimbabwe is actually serious about making tough reforms.