Readers will remember his big message because it is so well-supported with particulars. The book’s great value is in Lewis’s relentless turning over of rocks so that we can see the creepy things that prefer to dwell in darkness. It isn’t that the rich exploit the poor, but that the well-connected exploit everyone else. Lewis demonstrates that enormous amounts of wealth are funneled into organizations that could never pass the test of the market (earn their revenues through production and exchange) and that many special privileges are ladled out to interest groups in violation of a neutral, universal rule of law.Īll of that makes the average American much worse off. Focusing on the years immediately after the bursting of the housing bubble, Lewis documents the vast array of sleazy relationships between politicians (and other government officials) and many business, professional, labor, and nonprofit entities that benefit from “you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours” dealings. Over the last several years, sales of Rand’s magnum opus, Atlas Shrugged, have surged as Americans increasingly realize that the nation is mimicking her novel, where success depends on whom you know rather than what you produce.Īn excellent companion to Atlas Shrugged would be Crony Capitalism in America, by Hunter Lewis.
Crony Capitalism in America 2008 – 2012 by Hunter Lewis (AC2 Books 2013), 399 pages.Īyn Rand called it “the aristocracy of pull.” That was her term for the political-economic system in which people can get ahead (and even become exceptionally wealthy) by virtue of their connections with those in power, rather than by their work, innovations, and risk-taking.
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