Politicians are to blame if we have crony capitalists


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Capitalism has a problem. Increasingly it is viewed as a deeply unfair system favouring a small, privileged elite at the expense of everyone else.

Our politicians have been quick to join the criticism. Last week David Cameron mooted granting extra powers to shareholders to restrain executive pay. Today he will give a speech on how to make capitalism more “inclusive”. Ed Miliband, meanwhile, has attacked “rip-off Britain” and backs forcing firms to consult workers on bosses’ pay levels.

There is a whiff of hypocrisy in some of these statements. Recent government initiatives include a plan to give top executives special access to ministers and a scheme to subsidise mortgages which will be run by the housebuilding industry.

Nevertheless, both leaders are correct in acknowledging the UK has a serious problem with “crony capitalism”. They are wrong, however, about the causes and solutions.

In fact, cronyism is quickly rooted out in a genuinely free economy. Companies that fail to incentivise success fall behind the competition. Cosy and complacent corporate cliques are outflanked by vigorous and innovative market entrants.

That is how markets are supposed to work. But Western economies have moved a very long way from free-market capitalism. It is not just that government spending now accounts for close to half of GDP; most sectors are also very heavily regulated.

For many firms, profits are more dependent on political favours than serving individual customers. Energy companies rely on rigged electricity markets for their reveunues from renewables; rail firms require operating subsidies; the defence industry needs government contracts, and so on. The banking sector is, of course, one of the most telling examples. Without the bailouts, many of the banks now being heavily criticised on pay would not exist.

Read the rest of the article on the CityAM website.

Richard Wellings was formerly Deputy Research Director at the Institute of Economic Affairs. He was educated at Oxford and the London School of Economics, completing a PhD on transport and environmental policy at the latter in 2004. He joined the Institute in 2006 as Deputy Editorial Director. Richard is the author, co-author or editor of several papers, books and reports, including Towards Better Transport (Policy Exchange, 2008), A Beginner’s Guide to Liberty (Adam Smith Institute, 2009), High Speed 2: The Next Government Project Disaster? (IEA , 2011) and Which Road Ahead - Government or Market? (IEA, 2012). He is a Senior Fellow of the Cobden Centre and the Economic Policy Centre.


1 thought on “Politicians are to blame if we have crony capitalists”

  1. Posted 19/01/2012 at 13:47 | Permalink

    Richard is quite right. Politicians love power and they have succeeded in grabbing far too much of it. Hence it can often pay commercial interests to suck up to politicians in various ways. The solution is to reduce the size and power of the state. The same applies in spades to the European Union. I wonder what percentage of the population of Brussels consists of lobbyists?

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