Thursday, January 14, 2010
'Saving Capitalism from capitalists'
The Weekly Standard's Irwin Stelzer has penned a piece that all conservatives should read. The bottom line on bankers, insurers, airline execs and others: Capitalists sometimes don't act like capitalists. Example:
The Weekly Standard's Irwin Stelzer has penned a piece that all conservatives should read. The bottom line on bankers, insurers, airline execs and others: Capitalists sometimes don't act like capitalists. Example:
The (health) insurance industry’s monopoly power does not arise from any natural cause, though, such as the enormous cost of constructing competing electricity transmission lines, or of tearing up the streets of a major city to allow competing gas distribution companies. No, such monopoly power as insurance companies have was created by laws it lobbied for and got—exemption from the antitrust laws, and limitations on competition across state lines. The way the industry saw it, unregulated monopoly power is best, but if that game is up, regulation is to be preferred to competition. Which is why the industry fought to retain its exemption from the antitrust laws—and, to its relief, won.On the left, E.J. Dionne has figured it out. On the right, will 'conservative movement' types figure it out? I doubt it.
