Cronyism is when politicians in government endow business favours to corporate interests, such as awarding government contracts to one’s donors.
Left-wingers will say cronyism is capitalist.
Right-wingers will say cronyism is anti-capitalist.
This is because left-wingers associate capitalism with greed via whatever means, whilst right-wingers associate capitalism with freedom of choice.
Cronyism is greedy. Cronyism is not freedom of choice. So both sides decry cronyism.
So the question should be, which lends itself to cronyism: a bigger or smaller government?
To help answer this question, consider the context of the UK: How much are NHS contracts worth?
The bigger the government, the bigger the contracts tend to be.
A big contract more likely or less likely to attract the attention of corporate interests with deep pockets – the bigger the contract, the more worth there is in “investing” in political donations with the aim of securing “favours”.
Idealistically, we would all wish that all forms of corruption were eliminated.
Left-wingers often argue that nationalising industries will industries, by removing the profit motive, would eliminate greed and thus corruption from the system. But does nationalisation actually eliminate greed and corruption?
Even nationalised industries need to be operated, and managed. That means power. The bigger the industry, the greater the power wielded by its managers. Even if an industry is nationalised, managers can award the best jobs to their favourite people, in return for other favours. The scope of possible favours are far too diverse to be described, so use your imagination. Even if you give everyone the same amount of pay, some people will get better jobs than others – some jobs are less demanding and other jobs are more rewarding. This gives us the exact same result as cronyism.
Others argue, better to let democracy control who’s in power than to have greed drive those in power. But that’s not how democracy works. You don’t vote every single manager into power. When did you last vote in the head of the NHS? Who voted in the head of Network Rail? And in what way does this eliminate greed – doesn’t everyone want to be better paid?
In contrast, in free market capitalism, if you don’t support a particular manager, you don’t have to buy their products. If you hate Elon Musk, you can stop using Tesla, SpaceX, and Twitter products. Nobody is forcing you to use Bill Gates’ products – you choose to because they offer the best level of access that you need. Every day, every transaction you make, is a direct vote as to how successful and powerful these people become. No level of democratic voting can match such granularity of choice.
So which is a better representation of “power to the people” – letting people get rich and powerful because of popular choice, or letting people get rich and powerful because of other powerful people?
Left-wingers like to accuse right-wingers of entrenching the rich and the establishment, but with both nationalised industries and big government cronyism, it is those already in power who decide which other people get put into other positions of power.
In a free-market, the only reason CEOs are powerful is because people choose to buy and use their products.
Hoong-Wai in the UK 