It’s a fact that the capitalist system a country has effects its democracy and limits the freedom of its people, and the capitalism (along with a few other countries) in the United States today is known as Crony Capitalism.
Who benefits from Crony Capitalism — hint, it’s not 99.9% of the people?
But there are several forms of capitalism so there are other choices: Turbo Capitalism, Responsible Capitalism, Popular Capitalism, Crony Capitalism and State Capitalism.
Economic Help.org reports that “Crony Capitalism is a term used to refer to the situation where business success is related to strategic influences with civil servants, politicians and those in authority.”
If you want to discover the countries where crony capitalism exists, The Economist publishes The crony-capitalism index. Take a look.
I prefer Responsible Capitalism. Click Economic Help.org to learn what that means, and then read the rest of this post to discover why that’s my choice.
By the way, capitalism was not invented in the United States. Watch the following video to find out more. In addition, democracy was invented by the Greeks in ancient Athens more than 500 years before Jesus Christ was born.
The odds favor that most people think there is only one form of democracy, because most don’t have a clue what a democracy really is and the effect capitalism has on the freedom of the people.
According to Democracy Building.info, there are three basic types of democracy: direct democracy (Switzerland), presidential democracy (USA, France), and parliamentary democracy (UK, Germany, Spain, Italy, etc.).
However, Governmentvs.com lists 10 different types of democracies. I’m not going to list them here. You can click the link if you want to learn more.
Since there are so many forms of capitalism and democracy, which combination offers the best place to live?
One way to answer that question is to look at the world’s 5 happiest countries: Denmark, Switzerland, Iceland, Norway and Finland.
We already know Switzerland is a direct democracy. Norway and Denmark are constitutional monarchies with parliaments. Finland and Iceland are parliamentary democracies.
It might also surprise you to discover that three of the five happiest countries are also on the list for the most socialist nations in the world: Denmark, Finland, and Norway.
To be clear, Denmark, Finland and Norway are not socialist countries, but they have social safety net programs to make sure no one starves or ends up homeless. It also helps that poverty is low in these five countries. The poverty rate in Switzerland is 7.6 percent, in Finland it’s less than 5 percent; it’s 6 percent in Denmark, 9 percent in Iceland, and in Norway the child poverty rate is 3.4 percent.
In the United States, more than 45 million people live in poverty (more than the combined populations of the 5 happiest countries in the world), and 22 percent of America’s children live in poverty.
Did you notice that the five happiest countries in the world are not listed on The Economist’s Crony-Capitalism Index? What does that say about Crony Capitalism?
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Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran
who went to college on the GI Bill and taught in the public schools for thirty years (1975 – 2005).
Lofthouse’s first novel was the award winning historical fiction My Splendid Concubine [3rd edition]. His second novel was the award winning thriller Running with the Enemy followed by his award winning memoir Crazy is Normal.
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