Big Business or Big Government?September 20, 2008
I read an article the other day, don’t remember where, that claimed conservatives are more susceptible to being startled and more fearful people in general, while liberals are more relaxed and easy-going. Supposedly, this explains the reason Republicans tend to take threats and terrorism more seriously — ignoring the obvious fact that many (if not most) wars are started by Democrats. It doesn’t make sense for many reasons, most obviously because liberals have a hundred other threats at the top of their agenda: environmental damage, rogue private enterprise, erosion of civil liberties, etc. But this article isn’t about the bogus study, it’s actually about the way people define a threat. They got me thinking, I actually agree with many of the left-wing concerns, but where they lose me is always at the proposed solution. Liberals always complain about the need to keep some of the more chaotic forces of freedom in check, which I agree with, but their solutions always involve bigger government. Why is that not also considered a threat? When was the last time Google threw you in prison without trial? When was the last time Walmart declared war against a sovereign nation? When was the last time Disney built a concentration camp? When was the last time GM manned the border? Governments are far bigger threats than corporations. They have police forces, courts and armies. They have tax collectors and intelligence agents. They own the public lands and control the public purse. They have access to much more information about you than any one corporation. They have a monopoly on power — yet, you are afraid of McDonalds? Big businesses do plenty of terrible things, but that’s why we need a nimble and focused government to keep them in line. If you want to save yourself from the abuses of power, you need to de-centralize the power. The worst thing you can do is concentrate even more power in the hands of any few people, private or public. The personality type attracted to the influence of a major private corporation would be more than willing to sacrifice a few years of high wages to achieve ultimate authority in government. It doesn’t make sense to solve one problem by creating two more.
If you’re going to argue that a particular problem is best solved by government, that’s another issue (which I will most likely disagree with, but we can discuss issue by issue). Just never forget the trade-off, the threat of bigger government needs to be included in your calculus. Unfortunately, today more often than not it’s completely ignored.
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Obviously the main reason that liberals support government is that they believe that there is a system of accountability in government (namely elections) that doesn’t exist for big corporations.
True, corporations have responsibilities to their shareholders. But shareholding isn’t distributed equally across the whole population the way that votes are.
Of course, liberals may be *wrong* about government and elections. Perhaps elections don’t really work to make governments accountable at all. Perhaps corruption is too endemic. Perhaps elections are simply too infrequent to give the electorate significant control. Perhaps the result is too biased by TV advertising.
But if you want to *understand* why liberals are happier with centralizing power in government than corporations, *that*’s the reason : ostensibly there’s a mechanism for a “fairer”, more egalitarian distribution of accountability.
Thanks for the explanation, of course I disagree that governments are more accountable… In fact, I would argue the exact opposite — the fact people believe they are more accountable is the reason they are able to get away with so much corruption, you should never have faith in a crook. Democracy doesn’t work unless people restrain the government — the government has even less incentive to self-regulate than business… most people just don’t know or care what’s really going on. Every once in a while a major crisis like the great depression or world war 2 will wake everyone up for a few years (or weeks?) but that never lasts. I am still in favor of de-centralizing the power.