Allies against crony capitalism found in an unexpected place

I find much to agree with in this post on The Next Right, a blog dedicated to discussion of how the GOP can rescue itself doctrinally and win elections.  And it's not just because the post uses my favorite quotation from Adam Smith.  The point is that today politicians in both parties routinely choose conferring benefits on particular businesses over maintaining a healthy environment for competitive enterprise in general.  If government does nothing else with respect to enterprise, it must make and enforce sound rules of the game. 

Using the antitrust laws and agencies like the FCC to preserve and stimulate competition used to be taken seriously by both parties--expressly for the purpose of preserving a competitive playing field.  But since about 1981 there has been a growing, and now near total, capitulation to rent seeking and crony capitalism in the US.  The games are mostly played without referees.  The inmates are running the asylum.  The fox is guarding the chickens.  Fill in your own metaphor here. 

Update on Monday, September 1, 2014 at 09:59AM by Skeptic

In the very valuable Real-World Economics Review, Thomas R. Wells analyses Adam Smith's views and goals by carefully considering not just Wealth of Nations (1776) but also Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759).  Recovering Adam Smith's ethical economics.  Instead of advocating for laissez faire, a term Smith never used, Smith's target for reform was crony capitalism, which he argued was an unethical oppression of labor as well as a drag on creation of real wealth. Smith was not just concerned with the creation of wealth but also its equitable distribution.

Smith’s commitment to “equity” for the working class was behind the vehemence of his opposition to mercantilist (“business economics”) arguments for policies that would protect or promote the profits of producers and intermediaries. Smith saw such pro-business arguments—which arguably persist as the core of neoliberalism (Harvey 2007)—whether for direct subsidies or competition-restricting regulations, as an intellectually bankrupt and often morally corrupt rhetorical veil for what were actually “taxes” upon the poor (what we now call “rents”).3  Such taxes are unjust and outrageous because they violate fair play both in the deceptive rhetoric by which they are advanced and by harming the interests of one group in society (generally, the poor and voiceless) to further the interests of another (unsurprisingly, the rich and politically connected). Smith explicitly moralised the point, "To hurt in any degree the interest of any one order of citizens, for no other purpose but to promote that of some other, is evidently contrary to that justice and equality of treatment which the sovereign owes to all the different orders of his subjects (WN IV.viii.30)".