Fascism is not the same as capitalism. For capitalism to work properly, it is required that market power is minimized and that companies cannot influence politics. The fact that they have been able to do so is not capitalism.

Milton Friedman – In Capitalism and Freedom (1962), he argues that government intervention should be minimal and that businesses should focus on profit rather than lobbying for special advantages. While he doesn’t explicitly state that capitalism requires private companies to stay out of politics, he warns against corporate influence leading to cronyism.

Adam Smith – In The Wealth of Nations (1776), he warns against “the merchants and manufacturers” using their influence to gain monopolies and special privileges, which distort free competition. He emphasizes that capitalism works best when businesses do not manipulate laws in their favor.

James Buchanan (Public Choice Theory) – Buchanan and other public choice theorists (like Gordon Tullock) argue that when businesses influence politics, they engage in rent-seeking, which distorts market efficiency. They emphasize that government should limit corporate lobbying to prevent economic inefficiencies.

Luigi Zingales – A more recent economist, Zingales argues in A Capitalism for the People (2012) that corporate political influence undermines free markets and leads to a system of “crony capitalism,” where economic power translates into political power.

The word you’re looking for is pluralism.

Centrism doesn’t mean that you can’t choose between democrats and republicans, it means that ideologically, you believe in a balance between capitalist ideas and socialist ideas. For example, you can believe in the Hayekian idea that the many interactions between individuals in the market is better at creating prosperity than a centralized government that distributes all goods and services. But you can also believe that the market can’t do everything on its own due to market failures like monopoly power, externalities, assymmetric information. There exists a compromise between the two that is negotiated through politics. A core necessity for this to happen is that democracy is maintained. Democracy is not maintained when elections are bought by companies.

What is happening in the US now is that politics has been taken over by the private market. No economist would have agreed with this (unless they were paid to). It is against everything that we know. This is not a left vs right stance. It’s a democracy vs autocracy stance. Autocracy can happen from both the right and left, and it doesn’t matter who.

The one thing I dislike about the idea of centrism is the idea that you can’t decide on everything because you remain agnostic about every issue. I think a much better idea to advocate for is pluralism: the idea that your opinion on specific issues is not dependent on your politcal stance. Every issue is unique and doesn’t automatically identify you with left or right. You can have different opinions on different issues.

What has been psycho about the democratic party?

I found it difficult to transfer contacts there compared to signal, but you’re right, it’s better.