Munger and Villarreal-Diaz’s “The Road to Crony Capitalism” argues that market-oriented capitalism is transformed into pro-business interventionism because capitalists often find that rent-seeking earns high returns. But prudence will say: “Despite the copious money, this rent-seeking probably is not going to work out well for you in the long run. It will foster destructive consequences for all aspects of your company, far beyond this individual act.” The history of Enron documents the catastrophic result of such contra-capitalist subversion.

Roger S. Donway is an independent scholar and author living in Poughkeepsie, New York. Since 2005, he has worked as a researcher and editor for Robert Bradley Jr.’s tetralogy on Enron.
Economic PolicyEconomyFree Market Economics
Other Independent Review articles by Roger S. Donway
Spring 2013 Reconsidering Gabriel Kolko: A Half-Century Perspective
Summer 2010 Capitalism, Socialism, and the “Middle Way”: A Taxonomy