It feels the U.S. is moving closer to a textbook definition of crony capitalism. Really sad but unsurprising with the current administration.

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mullingitover 3 hours ago | parent [-]

I don't think you can move closer to something that you're already fully enmeshed in.

The rate that the ruling class ran into crony capitalism at the first chance they got is something that needs to be remembered. They'll try to act like they were always against it at some point in the near future.

	▲	olalonde 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Milton Friedman was prescient on this: > The two biggest enemies of the free market are two separate groups: my academic colleagues and business people. Business people are enemies of free markets, not friends. > [...] > The business people are just the opposite. They're all in favor of freedom for everybody else, and at the drop of a hat you can get any leading businessman to give you an eloquent speech on the virtues of a free market. But when it comes to their own business, they want to go down to Washington and get a special tariff to protect their business. They want a special tax deduction. They want a tax subsidy. And Chrysler is on the verge of failing, which it should have done. It should have been allowed to fail. Chrysler goes down and exercises political influence and tries to get the government to lend it money to subsidize it. > So businessmen in general — not all, there have been some notable exceptions — and I don't want to include everybody. But in the main, most businessmen are enemies of free markets. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vhgaPVO8aw8