Commentary The assault on enterprise of the last few years—meaning not the biggest politically connected businesses but smaller ones reflecting vibrant commercial life—has taken very strange forms. Ever since the New York Times said the way forward was to “go Medieval,” the elites have been attempting just that. But this medievalism has not come at the expense of…
A Genealogy of Corporatism
Commentary It’s not capitalism. It’s not socialism. The new word we are hearing these days is the right word: corporatism. It refers to the merger of industry and state into a unit with the purpose of achieving some grand visionary end, the liberty of individuals be damned. The word itself predates its successor, which is…
Twenty Grim Realities Unearthed by Lockdowns
June 9, 2023
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administrative stateBig MediaBig PharmaBig TechcartelizationCDCcensorshipCentral BankingcorporatismcorruptionDeep StateNIHOpinionPropagandapublic educationPublic HealthSegregationsocial credit systemsocialismstatismsurveillanceViewpointsWHOwokeWorld Health Organization
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Commentary It’s common now to speak of the before times in contrast to the after times. The turning point was of course March 16, 2020, the day of 15 Days to Flatten the Curve, though authoritarian trends predate that. Rights were suddenly broadly throttled, even religious rights. We were told to conduct every aspect of…
How Lockdowns Bolstered an Industrial Cartel
May 30, 2023
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big businesscorporatismfascismindustrial cartelsLudwig ErhardOpinionregulatory stateSmall BusinessesU.S. economyViewpoints
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Commentary Among the many grim memories from the depths of lockdowns were boarded up local shops and long lines outside the big-box stores like WalMart, Kroger, Whole Foods, and Home Depot. For very strange reasons, small business was universally declared to be nonessential whereas the big chains were deemed essential. This amounted to a massive…
The Rise of Conscious Consumerism
May 9, 2023
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Business & MarketsBusiness Columnistsconscious consumerismcorporatismOpinionrecessionU.S. economyViewpoints
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Commentary There is this joke in economics that says two people are walking along and one says “There’s a twenty dollar bill on the sidewalk.” The economist responds: “That cannot be true because someone would have already picked it up.” There is a weird truth to the joke that in economics class we learn about…
The Racket of Regulatory Capture
Commentary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., in interviews never fails to bring up the problem of regulatory capture. He calls this merger of enterprise and government a kind of corporatism. That’s the older word for the ideology later called fascism. It is the correct label. He is to be commended for raising the problem, which is…
The ‘1619 Project’ Is Wrong About Capitalism, but Not in the Way You May Think
Commentary In 1834, an angry mob descended on a gathering at a New York church. Their target was Lewis and Arthur Tappan, owners of a successful mercantile import business. When the Tappans fled, the mob went to Lewis Tappan’s home and threw his belongings into a fire on the street. The Tappans were the epitome…
Technocracy and Totalitarianism
What follows is an essay adapted from my new book ”The New Abnormal: The Rise of the Biomedical Security State,” originally published in The American Mind. The Italian philosopher Augusto Del Noce, who came of age in the 1930s and observed with horror the emergence of Mussolini’s Fascist regime in his native country, warned that “the widespread notion…
DeSantis Blasts Corporatism, Elitism, and GOP’s Soft Approach to Big Business
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said in a speech at the National Conservatism Conference in Miami, on Sept. 11, that Republicans have been too soft on big business and that the GOP shouldn’t shy away from taking on major corporations if it means advancing conservative aims and defending American values. DeSantis has taken a range of…
Woke Capitalism Is a Monopoly Game
February 15, 2022
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Corporate Activismcorporatismeconomic fascismmonopolyOpinionsocialismstakeholder capitalismViewpointswokewoke capitalism
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Commentary In 2018, Ross Douthat of the New York Times introduced the phrase “woke capital.” Essentially, Douthat suggested that woke capitalism works by substituting symbolic value for economic value. Under woke capitalism, corporations offer workers rhetorical placebos in lieu of costlier economic concessions, such as higher wages and better benefits. The same gestures of wokeness also appease the…
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