A year ago, I posted my concerns about certain private sector groups closing ranks with the government.

I have also noted that as regulations and taxes become more pervasive this, in a way, forces business to "negotiate" its survival with the government. It's destructive as you will see from the following quote from Professor Richard Ebeling that he shared in his recent article at the Nassau Institute.

Dr. Ebeling's brief intro is followed by the quotes from economist Ludwig von Mises.

"The Austrian economist, Ludwig von Mises, described this twisted, corrupted, and politicized capitalism over 80 years ago, in 1932, in an essay on “The Myth of the Failure of Capitalism,” published shortly before the coming of Hitler and the Nazi movement to power:"

“In the interventionist state it is no longer of crucial importance for the success of an enterprise that the business should be managed in a way that it satisfies the demands of consumers in the best and least costly manner.

“It is far more important that one has ‘good relationships’ with the political authorities so that the interventions work to the advantage and not the disadvantage of the enterprise. A few marks’ more tariff protection for the products of the enterprise and a few marks’ less tariff for the raw materials used in the manufacturing process can be of far more benefit to the enterprise than the greatest care in managing the business.

“No matter how well an enterprise may be managed, it will fail if it does not know how to protect its interests in the drawing up of the custom rates, in the negotiations before the arbitration boards, and with the cartel authorities. To have ‘connections’ becomes more important that to produce well and cheaply.

“So the leadership positions within the enterprises are no longer achieved by men who understand how to organize companies and to direct production in the way the market situation demands, but by men who are well thought of ‘above’ and ‘below,’ men who understand how to get along well with the press and all the political parties, especially with the radicals, so that they and their company give no offense. It is that class of general directors that negotiate far more often with state functionaries and party leaders than with those from whom they buy or to whom they sell.

“Since it is a question of obtaining political favors for these enterprises, their directors must repay the politicians with favors. In recent years, there have been relatively few large enterprises that have not had to spend very considerable sums for various undertakings in spite of it being clear from the start that they would yield no profit. But in spite of the expected loss it had to be done for political reasons. Let us not even mention contributions for purposes unrelated to business – for campaign funds, public welfare organizations, and the like.

“Forces are becoming more and more generally accepted that aim at making the direction of large banks, industrial concerns, and stock corporations independent of the shareholders . . . The directors of large enterprises nowadays no longer think they need to give consideration to the interests of the shareholders, since they feel themselves thoroughly supported by the state and that they have interventionist public opinion behind them.

“In those countries in which statism has most fully gained control . . . they manage the affairs of their corporations with about as little concern for the firm’s profitability as do the directors of public enterprises. The result is ruin.

“The theory that has been cobbled together says that these enterprises are too big to allow them to be managed simply in terms of their profitability. This is an extraordinarily convenient idea, considering that renouncing profitability in the management of the company leads to the enterprise’s insolvency. It is fortunate for those involved that the same theory then demands state intervention and support for those enterprises that are viewed as being too big to be allowed to go under . . .

“The crisis from which the world is suffering today is the crisis of interventionism and of national and municipal socialism; in short, it is the crisis of anti-capitalist policies.”

Sound familiar?