Industry Consolidation: the Smoking Gun of “Crony Capitalism”

摘要

After many years of experience I have come to assume, as my default position, that politicians and bureaucrats are lying.I’ve come to believe that government is in the business for—businesses. And big businesses will pay enormous sums for political favors, those that mandate the purchase of their products or services, or those favors that hamstring or destroy their competitors. Creating almost impenetrable webs of lies to cover their true purpose is part of the political game, a game usually played in the name of our “well-being” or “safety.”How do we know what to believe? Even harder sometimes is how to know what to look for. One helpful question is Murray Rothbard’s “Cui bono?” (Who benefits?), as a way to look at historical events, a method that allows one to “back in” to the real reasons that this or that policy is or was promoted. Take electronic medical records, for instance. Who benefited from mandating the purchase of these systems? Clearly, those producing these systems reaped the first and maximum benefits.Jim Epstein at Reason magazine suggested the investigative tool that helps us know when to ask Rothbard’s question. During his two days of filming a documentary on free-market medicine at our facility, he said that “industry consolidation is a smoking gun.” It helps to show that government and its capitalist cronies are acting in concert to achieve their usual objectives.One example is the rapid disappearance of rural hospitals. This has occurred simultaneously with record profitability at the big city corporate hospitals. The big city hospitals are the obvious beneficiaries of this industry consolidation. The difficulties of the rural hospitals are primarily the result of the rules and regulations issued by the federal government, with which only the big corporate hospitals can comply. That this hospital industry consolidation is occurring should represent sufficient evidence that the big hospital beneficiaries were actually instrumental in the implementation of these crushing rules and regulations.