The Trudeau government is a case study for crony capitalism. And crony capitalism, when it is implemented whole-scale as the official economic engine of a nation, is called fascism. We are not fascist yet, but are on the muddy crony capitalistic pathway to it.
Most understand that socialism generates a welfare state,
which supposedly purports to help the needy. Unfortunately, they superficially
help the needy by engaging in immoral economic practices. And the help they
offer is only momentary, for as Margret Thatcher famously said, "They
eventually run out of other people's money to spend". But what many miss
is that this same welfare phenomenon is simultaneously occurring on the
corporate level, and is the reason for the nation's economic woes. The government is engaging in Corporate Welfare. They are
socialistically giving money to corporations to help them prosper, in direct opposition to capitalistic doctrine.
Now imagine that there were 3 restaurants in a town, and
they were competing for the town's
patronage. The numbers were tight, and the battle of the bistros was afoot. Each restaurant tried to survive by making better food at a cheaper price. But imagine if the town council stepped in and gave one of those eateries a million dollars in aid. And in turn, that eatery used the million dollars to cut the price of its food in half. Given that people value their money, they would naturally gravitate to the far cheaper restaurant. This would hammer the nails of bankruptcy into the coffin of the competitors, who could no longer compete. And why? Because the government picked a favourite and enabled it to destroy its competition.
patronage. The numbers were tight, and the battle of the bistros was afoot. Each restaurant tried to survive by making better food at a cheaper price. But imagine if the town council stepped in and gave one of those eateries a million dollars in aid. And in turn, that eatery used the million dollars to cut the price of its food in half. Given that people value their money, they would naturally gravitate to the far cheaper restaurant. This would hammer the nails of bankruptcy into the coffin of the competitors, who could no longer compete. And why? Because the government picked a favourite and enabled it to destroy its competition.
When a government uses the powers of the state to attack
political enemies, this is universally, in Western democracy, seen as a grievous violation of the law. But this is exactly what the government does with
corporate welfare, it selectively picks winners and losers. And sadly, the
reason is often darker than mere economic stupidity; it can involve a kickback
that helps the government stay in power; For example, the eatery that was the beneficiary of city council's corporate welfare, in turn, donates a portion of those gifted tax
dollars back into the re-election campaigns of select Councillors (a tit for tat). Yet even without a tit for tat, it is morally repugnant and unfair.
Air Canada is a massive company. Yet as time has past, it hasn't been
as cost-effective as it should have been to remain competitive. Because of this,
smaller discount airlines can surface and start eating away at Air Canada's
dominance. This occurred a couple of decades ago when a company called Jetsgo
was finding success by chipping away at Air Canada's profits. Jetsgo was a
discount airline that was simply a lot cheaper. Air Canada, it seemed to me,
was unwilling to take on their union to lower their operating costs and slid
close to bankruptcy. They squealed to the federal government for a bailout and were
given a massive sum. Remember, they were competing with other smaller airlines,
which would have benefited substantially if Air Canada went under. To survive in a purely capitalistic system, Air Canada would have to had substantially trimmed its prices. Yet ours isn't a laissez-faire Capitalistic system. So instead, Air Canada used federal money (corporate socialism) to create its
own regional discount airline to undercut the price of Jetsgo (classic fascism). It was called Tango. Because of federal interference, Jetsgo went bankrupt. This relieved Air Canada of that
pestilent competition. Tango was then folded for it was no longer needed. This
seems, to me, to have all been done with federal bailout money. The federal
government of Canada is destroying people's lives by undercutting their
businesses by unfairly utilizing the near-infinite funds of the state to
selectively support one business to destroy another. This is not capitalism. This
is corruption.
Let's bring this to today: Covid19 has decimated the travel business. Airlines all around the world are
struggling to survive. The CBC seems to like pushing stories contemplating a
governmental intervention to funnel large sums of tax dollars into Air Canada's
coffers (1). Air Canada has publically been pushing for governmental aid to rescue it before it has to restructure itself to stave off bankruptcy, a recurring theme with them. Yet, interestingly, with the
worldwide hobbling of airline companies, I saw a story where Air Canada just
paid 720 million dollars to buy a European airline company (2). So while they were
simultaneously playing the news media to report on their need for bailout money,
they spent 3/4 of a billion dollars to buy an international competitor?
Unfortunately for Air Canada, Trudeau has already broken the
Canadian piggy bank - and the back of Canada's economy. Otherwise, he would
have likely already ponied up a billion or so for the government's preferred airline. We'll have to keep watching to see if Trudeau's libs give Air Canada more tax money to assist in the further destruction of their competition. Fascists are what fascists do.Keep capitalism clean and remove socialism's corporate welfare corruption.
Or maybe I'm just crazy.
honest ABE
(1) Battered Canadian airline industry pushing for government bailout
(2) European regulators to take closer look at Air Canada – Transat deal
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