Capitalism: Wolves In The Throne Room

 (Drivebycuriosity) - It seems that capitalism is approaching a crisis. The crisis does not come from inside, instead there are growing attacks from outside, from politics. Politicians from the left to the right are assaulting the global economy, private enterprises and capitalism.  The greatest thread comes in  the moment from President Trump and his conservative supporters. Trump`s tariffs on Chinese goods - and some Chinese retaliations - are irritating investors and the stock market which already slowed down investing. Trump`s tariffs hiked prices of imported goods, curbed US exports, reduced company earnings and discouraged investing & hiring. Trump and some of his conservative supporters want to force American global companies to shift production to the US and they are coercing American consumers to buy only American products, whatever they may cost and whatever quality they have. Trump`s trade war against China and other nations is throwing sand into the gears of the global economy, sabotaging international supply chains and reducing competition.

But there is more. Trump & other conservatives are also attacking the big tech companies which are keeping the US economy going. President Trump threatens Amazon and other tech companies with extended regulations and declared "The European Union is suing them all of the time. Well, we should be doing this. They're our companies" (reason).

The conservatives get support from the left, especially from Elizabeth Warren, Berni Sanders and others leaders of the Democratic Party. They want to break up technology giants like Google, Facebook, Apple & Amazon (stratechery). Sen. Warren claims: "Today’s big tech companies have too much power — too much power over our economy, our society, and our democracy"  (teamwarren). She declares she wants to “ensure that there are more representatives from labor, environmental, and consumer groups than from corporations and trade groups on every existing advisory committee” (vox).

The political left and right want to gag the big tech companies, to oversee & to constrain their business. Big powerful American bureaucracies join the crusade. The Justice Department wants to investigate Alphabet’s Google and Apple while the FTC plans to probe Amazon & Facebook to determine if they abused their massive market power, setting up what could be unprecedented, wide-ranging probes of some of the world’s largest companies.

Republicans and Democrats started to throw sand in the gears of the economy and they began to make the live of the company CEOs miserable. They all want to give the government more power and curb the power of the companies. But he bi-partisan attacks won`t destroy capitalism.  While politicians left and right seem to hate big corporations, the people - the consumers - love them. They love to get goods delivered cheap and fast  from Amazon, buy gadgets from Apple, search on Google and use the free services from Facebook and their daughter Instagram. But the attacks will slow down economic growth and harm everybody who does not live from the money of the taxpayers