Thursday, November 28, 2013

Pope Francis' Troops

There's been a bit of pushback after Pope Francis' remarks on capitalism.

But he's not exactly the Lone Ranger.  The TEA Party, for example, is not all that hot on typical American "capitalism", either.

Powerful business interests want to turn the tide against Tea Party-like upstarts within the Republican Party and return the GOP back to its traditional roots: 

Doling out special favors to powerful business interests....

...This is surely a dystopian future these radical fiscal conservatives paint, one in which lucrative transportation bills for which we have no money receive additional scrutiny. One in which private businesses have to finance their own imports and exports at market rates without the benefit of your money. One in which Congress refuses to surrender United States sovereignty to unnamed foreign courts.  And one in which businesses are denied immediate access to abundant sources of dirt-cheap labor....

Rush is not always right, ya'know.

Then there's Pethokoukis:

 “Conservatives — whether churchgoers or not — are not utopians,” writes AEI’s Jim Pethokoukis. “They understand market economies will never turn the world temporal into Paradise (while at the same time realizing that command-and-control economies have frequently produced a kind of hell on earth). Conservatives value the ‘safety net’ to help those whom the pope calls the ‘excluded.’ But conservatives also want to reform the safety net so more resources are devoted to raising the living standards of the truly needy rather than subsidizing the rich, moving the jobless toward work and self sufficiency, and increasing social mobility and equality of opportunity.”

So yes, there is always room for thinking about capitalism's dark side.  It would be nice if some folks actually thought, rather than simply opened their traps on national radio.

4 comments:

  1. Crony Capitalism, liked by both R's and D's, is flat out wrong. Also, a Utopia is impossible for fallen man, because you can only reach it by killing those who disagree and resist your version of it. It quickly becomes murderous tyranny. Any attempt at one or another Utopia has pretty much always devolved into a blood bath.

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  2. There is no such thing as crony capitalism, just capitalism.

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  3. The inability to distinguish applied morality is the hallmark of the idiot, Anony.

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  4. Don't be hard on yourself, Dad29. 'Tis the season to be jolly!

    Companies simply act in their own self-interest. "Greed is good" is the epitome of the corporate mission through taxpayer dollars AND/OR
    market competition.

    Hence, crony capitalism does NOT exist.

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