Acton Institute Powerblog Archives

Post Tagged 'Crony capitalism'

April 08, 2013

Texas: Big, Hot, Cheap and Right in the New York Times!

Brian Burrough has a mostly enjoyable New York Times review of a book that’s mostly positive about my native state’s mostly small-government formula for economic growth. Some excerpts: Ms. Grieder, a onetime correspondent for The Economist who now works at Texas Monthly, and a Texan herself, has written a smart little book that … explains why the Texas economy is thriving. Continue Reading...
March 28, 2013

Think Tanks Taking a Stand Against Crony Capitalism

Alejandro Chafuen, president and chief executive officer of Atlas Economic Research Foundation and board member of the Acton Institute, recently wrote a piece for Forbes.com about crony capitalism. Chafuen used to spend his summers in Argentina, so he begins his article with a story about a friend from Argentina. Continue Reading...
January 28, 2013

Jim Wallis, Davos Capitalism, Cronyism, and the ‘New Social Covenant’

Sojourners’ Jim Wallis has been at the Davos gathering in Switzerland and is urging us to be guided by a new Davos “covenant.” If you’ve never heard of Davos, Michael Miller’s RealClear Politics piece “Davos Capitalism” describes the gathering and its unassailable hubris this way: Davos capitalism, a managerial capitalism run by an enlightened elite–politicians, business leaders, technology gurus, bureaucrats, academics, and celebrities–all gathered together trying to make the economic world smarter or more humane…. Continue Reading...
December 18, 2012

On the Importance of Definitions

I recently asked the question at Ethika Politika, “Which Capitalism?” (also the title of my article), and I followed it up with a related question here regarding the relationship between distributism and capitalism (is the former a form of the latter?). Continue Reading...
May 23, 2012

Valuing Innovation, Not Smallness

Back in February I argued that since bias is inherent in institutions we should encourage the government to be biased toward entrepreneurship and away from corporatism. The result of such a bias would be to favor newer—and presumably smaller—businesses over more established—and presumably larger—ones, thereby reducing the levels of regulatory capture and crony capitalism (at least in theory). Continue Reading...