Attention Economy


Wednesday, January 27, 2021

Crony Capitalism is Hurting America

Made in the U.S.A.: Socialism for the Rich. Capitalism for the Rest.

GameStop Is Rage Against the Financial Machine
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-01-27/gamestop-short-squeeze-is-rage-against-the-financial-machine
John Authers notes:
“Instead of greed, this latest bout of speculation, and especially the extraordinary excitement at GameStop, has a different emotional driver: anger. The people investing today are driven by righteous anger, about generational injustice, about what they see as the corruption and unfairness of the way banks were bailed out in 2008 without having to pay legal penalties later, and about lacerating poverty and inequality. This makes it unlike any of the speculative rallies and crashes that have preceded it”.

Philadelphia let ‘college kids’ distribute vaccines. The result was a ‘disaster,’ volunteers say.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/01/27/philly-fighting-covid-vaccine/
“Philadelphia is home to some of the most venerated medical institutions in the country. Yet when it came time to set up the city’s first and largest coronavirus mass vaccination site, officials turned to the start-up Philly Fighting COVID, a self-described “group of college kids” with minimal health-care experience.
Chaos ensued.
Seniors were left in tears after finding that appointments they’d made through a bungled sign-up form wouldn’t be honored. The group switched to a for-profit model without publicizing the change and added a privacy policy that would allow it to sell users’ personal data. One volunteer alleged that the 22-year-old CEO had pocketed vaccine doses. Another described a “free-for-all” where unsupervised 18- and 19-year-olds vaccinated one another and posed for photos”.

My take:
To make capitalism more attractive, policymakers must emphasize pro-market (not pro-business) policies
https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/513956-to-make-capitalism-more-attractive-policymakers-must-emphasize-pro-market-not
The debate should be about the quality – not the size – of government
https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/513007-the-debate-should-be-about-the-quality-not-size-of-government


The Great Reversal: How America Gave Up on Free Markets