America: moving away from capitalism to corporatism?
 

I've been thinking about this a lot lately, but i started thinking that the economic environment isn't exactly as capitalistic as it used to be in the traditional sense.

for instance, its pretty hard starting a new business these days, as it seems everything favors businesses already established, particularly huge mega profit corporations.

The existing economic structure also seems to be stifling competition. examples of this range from gasoline price fixing to independant bands not being able to make it big without huge distribution corporate backing.

now, a lot of people like to argue that many of the stories you hear, like companies like IBM moving jobs overseas, are just results of capitalism. this is kinda hard to argue because we've all been engrained with the ideology that capitalism is great because it works and its gotten the USA to where it is today, (and then the history teacher points at USSR). its also hard to argue, because traditionally, capitalism HAS been very good to the USA.

however, I feel that many of these things ppl argue as "results of capitalism" are really the result of an emergance of "corportism".

i'm not an economics major (so maybe i'm just ignorant) but i would hazard to guess that before the emergance of corporations, laws and such to open new business probably favored more locally operated outfits.

i'm pretty much just free thinking this out right now, so please interject your own thoughts on the matter. just please, if you take issue with my examples, like the USSR one, say what you want to say and then get back to the overall topic. i dont want the thread turning into a capitalism vs. communism thread afterall...

Stranglely, the two major things you bring up can both be linked to economic reasons.

The difficulty starting a new business is because of the recession in the economy, and because of the lack of new markets for people to create businesses.

The moving jobs overseas is a result of free trade. Economics says that if someone is inefficient at producing something, they should produce something else. In the end, the quality of life in the nation goes up as the nation can import at a lower price than it could produce.

The reason why corporations have more power is precisely because they are entrenched. That doesn't mean that they are omnipotent or invulnerable. That just means that you'll have to work more efficiently (and pick you battles more wisely) if you want to compete with the big boys.

The way I see it, this is all inherent in the concept of capitalism.

For some reason corporatism always brings this to my mind first: the corporate state / fascist state of the 1930 to 1950's in Europe and Latin America .... must... stop.. studying...history!

hmm... the choking out of capitalism is certainly a concern worthy of attention.

but take heart in the fact that our country has crossed this bridge many times before. the first instance was the railroad companies who bought out politicians and monopolized a vital industry in the 1800's. Next you have the monolithic steel/textile/oil companies of the early industrial revolution.

each of these events were accompanied by a radical shift in the overall state of US industry and communication.

now we've got a situation that draws a few important comparisons with the flourishing of the technology sector. hopefully patience, business integrity and only a minimal amount of legislation will carry us through this current corporate environment.