Capitalism Comes in Many Flavors

Extracts

• “three competing models: the “entrepreneurial capitalism” of Silicon Valley, the “shareholder capitalism” of Gordon Gekko, and the “worker capitalism” of employee-owned and profit-sharing firms.”
• “The capitalism of the Gilded Age was a virtual creature of the State, with land grants and other railroad subsidies serving as the indispensable prerequisites for a single national market, and the national corporate economy being cartelized among industrial giants with the aid of patent pooling and tariffs.”
• “Managerial capitalism was not so much an external constraint imposed on big business, as a recognition by big business itself that State-enforced cartels and enforcement of labor discipline by domesticated unions were the best ways to guarantee stable profits in the long run”
• ““shareholder capitalism” is geared to the interests of management in an even more short-term and vulgar way than the managerial version”
• “most takeovers have been friendly — collusive acts between the managements of acquiring and acquired companies, often at the expense of the long-term profitability of both”
• “In short, the average large corporation under corporatism is a planned economy run by a self-perpetuating managerial oligarchy. The only effect of oversized bonuses and stock options is to make management even more short-sighted and self-serving at the expense of long-term productivity.”
• ““entrepreneurial capitalism,” with a new coat of paint, is being trotted out as the “Progressive” alternative to this neoliberal model of capitalism. It’s the “cognitive capitalism” or “green capitalism” of Barack Obama”
• “this model is just as exploitative — just as “capitalistic,” in the sense of being dependent on State-enforced monopoly for its profits — as neoliberalism.”
• “Cognitive, green, or progressive capitalism is absolutely dependent on the State for enclosing progress and innovation, via “intellectual property” (IP) law, as a source of artificial scarcity rents.”
• “its prominent spokespersons are IP hawks like Bill Gates (who denounced the members of the free and open source movement as “communists”)”