Cronyism is the exchange of political favors for political support. Voters and donors scratch the backs of politicians, and the politicians reciprocate by supporting legislation favorable to the voters and donors. In most instances (but not all) the political favors involve placing restrictions on how others may use their property.
For example, low-income voters (and their allies) advocate minimum wage laws and will support politicians who promote raising the minimum wage, and thereby restrict how business owners use their property. Business owners must sacrifice their judgment and values for others. Environmentalists support politicians who support laws that restrict the use of property in the name of protecting nature. Property owners must sacrifice their judgment and values for nature.
Cronyism forces individuals to sacrifice their judgment and values for others. And it is defended on the basis of service to the “public interest.” This is fascism.
Under fascism, property is privately “owned” but the use of property is dictated by the government. “Owners” are responsible for taxes, upkeep, and other expenses, but they cannot use their property as they deem best.
One of the architects of fascism was Benito Mussolini, who outlined his views in The Doctrine Of Fascism
Fascism sees in the world [as]… individuals and generations bound together by a moral law, with common traditions and a mission which suppressing the instinct for life closed in a brief circle of pleasure, builds up a higher life, founded on duty, a life free from the limitations of time and space, in which the individual, by self-sacrifice, the renunciation of self-interest, by death itself, can achieve that purely spiritual existence in which his value as a man consists.
To Mussolini, the individual must renounce everything, including his life, in service to others. And this is precisely what cronyism accomplishes.
Mussolini goes on:
In the Fascist conception of history, man is man only by virtue of the spiritual process to which he contributes as a member of the family, the social group, the nation, and in function of history to which all nations bring their contribution.
In other words, an individual has value only to the extent that he serves some social group, whether the community, the nation, or mankind. And the State exists to “encourage” such service.
The Fascist conception of the State is all embracing; outside of it no human or spiritual values can exist, much less have value. Thus understood, Fascism, is totalitarian, and the Fascist State a synthesis and a unit inclusive of all values—interprets, develops, and potentates the whole life of a people.
But fascism is only a consequence. Its cause is altruism—the believe that morality consists of self-sacrificial service to others. Fascists, communists, and socialists may disagree on which others we should serve, but they agree that we should serve others. They agree on the moral principle and just disagree on the details of application.
If we want to end cronyism, we must begin by rejecting altruism.