Statists are crafty. Most of them are clever enough that they don’t embrace full-scale socialism. Instead, they push for an ad hoc approach based on subsidies, bailouts, social engineering, price controls, and other forms of intervention.
If you want to get technical, they’re actually pushing a variant of fascism, with nominal private ownership but government direction and control.
But let’s avoid that loaded term and simply call it cronyism.
Source