Mitt is worse than our old Robber Barons
The Robber Barons created and ran entire new industries like steel, coal, oil, railroads. They were brutal but they were innovators and creators and perhaps were needed at that stage of America's development. Mitt Romney did not create anything except for minor investments in Staples, Dominoes and Sports Authority. Mitts forte was financial paper shenanigans that enabled him and his partners to mine companies and extract millions from them
The watchdogs are calling Mittster the “Buyout Baron.” Sounds pretty catchy to me.
Outstanding post and well said!
And they had financiers behind them. Nothing wrong with it. It's how America has been run since the get-go.
“They were brutal”
People throw such accusations around rather freely, as obviously reflected by the term “robber baron” itself. No, they weren’t Robber Barons. They didn’t rob anyone, any more than businesses rob people nowadays. Does anyone honestly think they broke more laws or were somehow less scrupulous than in today’s economy? If possibly so, only because of certain cultural things beyond their control: for example, today’s relative ease of communication and far more overbearing court system (and if the courts make for less corrupt businesses, bear in mind they also make for more corrupt plaintiffs).
Otherwise, it was then as it is now. Easy to attack the whole age or the whole system as corrupt than to demonstrate it in fact beyond the particular. The ethical sitting alongside the unethical. No accounting for brutality, but the market and the rule of law as the best protectors against it. Various perfectly legitimate practices—such as lower rates for larger freight—painted as evil by ingoramouses. As always, corruption following government intervention more reliably than anything else. See, for instance, the difference between the railroads and Standard Oil.
Ah, here we hit the heart of the matter. The problem is plutocracy, which people blame on Big Business. The only reliable means of stealing is to have the law behing you. And actually, the orignial robber barons, from whom the Rober Barons got their appelation, were the government. Plutocracy is more government corrupting business than business corrupting government, despite the popular imagination. Insofar as business sticks its head government’s business to win for itself further concessions, I am in with socialists and Marxists.
Except they get the solution all wrong. By growing government to crush capitalists, you only invite more intervention, more people getting rich off government, and more corruption of government by Big Business. The real solution is laissez faire. There’s nothing wrong with trusts, the transcontinental railroad could’ve been built on its own (and was, by James J. Hill), and the only robber barons are the ones who actually robbed people, i.e. the ones with the legal robbers in government behind them.