Cronyism is a serious problem in the United States, but unfortunately it is still not very well understood. In this new essay, Jay Cost explains what it is, and why we should be so worried about it. By mingling private and public interests, cronyism costs us hundreds of billions of dollars per year and threatens to transform our republic into an oligarchy, where the rich dominate the middle class. Worse, modern cronyism has become embedded into the laws themselves, so politicians in Washington...
After the Constitutional Convention, Benjamin Franklin was asked, “Well, Doctor, what have we got—a Republic or a Monarchy?” Franklin’s response: “A Republic—if you can keep it.”This book argues: we couldn’t keep it.A true republic privileges the common interest above the special interests. To do this, our Constitution established an elaborate system of checks and balances that disperses power among the branches of...
