Philosophers are not allowed to pretend as scientists, nor tender scientific answers in lieu of science. For in doing so, they have, rather than played the role of philosophy, instead usurped science and taken over. As a philosopher, I am not allowed to tender nor enforce conclusions on behalf of science. When a social skeptic tells you that your ideas/research inquiries or doubts are 'pseudoscience' or 'anti-science' or 'woo' - they are pretending to be scientists. Foisting conclusions on behalf of science. Philosophers can however, bound, shape the direction of, and intervene when science has morphed into becoming mankind's greatest enemy (killing 40% of the planet's insects with pesticides, nuclear weapons, skyrocketing diseases, etc.). So philosophy, and more importantly stakeholdership does have an authoritative role in that regard.
In this same way, it is not the job of the government to direct and execute business (as in a socialist context), rather to intervene when business has run amok and is in the process of becoming mankind's greatest enemy. Yes, after my 150+ strategies with the BEST US corporations, I can see that the success I helped foster in small part was used to create monist control, and extraction wealth for Cronies. There is no doubt of that. In one case, a client was putting all its mom and pop competitors out of business - through predatory price leveraging. I told them that this violated the Sherman Anti-Trust Act and then drew the line, to where I believed that predatory losses on core products, done solely to kill competitors and lock up the industry vertical - were possibly illegal. They did not listen - and we parted ways. This profit from predatory pricing market control, was routed offshore to trust accounts drawing from their Wall Street equity base. The profits were not used to hire new employees or create innovation nor improve the benefits package offered to wage earners. This is a process called Extraction-Sequestering. The money was NOT REINVESTED. This company was slammed with a rather large Anti-Trust action by the government later.
Is Cronyism the inevitable outcome of Capitalism? No. Cronyism is the inevitable outcome of unbounded Extraction. When the government and elites write laws which allow themselves to take as much profit out of a corporation or family as they prefer - this is Unbounded Extraction - and creates this self-reinforcing spiral:
1 - a government which believes it is talented and virtuous enough that it should usurp and be put in charge of most everything - and therefore must extract as much as possible in order to pay for that 'everything'.
2 - an elite class, competing with government who must extract as much as possible, and remove it into offshore trusts which are protected from government extraction. These offshore trusts bear an added feature in that they can create MORE profit than can the company from which the money was stolen in the first place. Such a deal!
3 - all of this arrives via push from Wall Street to improve the the 'efficiency' and 'productivity' of the corporation (mergers and consolidations until only 1 - 3 companies are left standing) - which means that middle income wage earners are removed from the economy - and the ranks of the poor increase. It is at this point the resemblance with socialized infrastructure begins to emerge (curiously)...
This last condition is then invoked to justify #1 above and the cycle repeats.
Haspel’s Paradox – a suppressed idea mutates to ever more virulent forms, these are then invoked to justify its continued suppression.
The United States is in a Haspel Spiral right now - directed by government and corporate leaders who do not grasp the above, and must substitute mandates of 'virtue' and 'efficiency' (replete with all the correct buzzwords) to stand in for the competence they lack.
The job of the government is to bound the function of business and help cultivate a fertile ground for its thriving, yet still refuse to usurp its role. Very much like ethical skepticism is a new view of the role of philosophy... if you are harmed/can be harmed as the stakeholder in a new science/technology - you are the new peer review.
This philosophical bounding, in no way constitutes pervasive Collectivism, nor does it foster excessive Extraction. :)