Say Anything Blog

This Huffington Post article strikes very, very close to the truth about what’s wrong with the American economy.

When I heard the word “corporatist” a couple of years ago, I laughed. I thought what a funny, made up, liberal word. I fancy myself a die-hard capitalist, so it seemed vaguely anti-business, so I was put off by it.

Well, as it turns out, it’s a great word. It perfectly describes a great majority of our politicians and the infrastructure set up to support the current corporations in the country. It is not just inaccurate to call these people and these corporations capitalists; it is in fact the exact opposite of what they are.

Capitalists believe in choice, free markets and competition. Corporatists believe in the opposite. They don’t want any competition at all. They want to eliminate the competition using their power, their entrenched position and usually the politicians they’ve purchased. They want to capture the system and use it only for their benefit.

From this springs everything from cap and trade and carbon credits to the “too big to fail” nonsense.  And it’s a bi-partisan problem.  Democrats and Republicans both, to varying degrees depending on the particular politician in question, represent the corporatists.  The only real difference is in the corporations they choose to represent, with none of them really being on the side of legitimate entrepreneurs who just want to be free to compete with one another and profit.

I don’t have a problem with corporations.  I think that businesses should be free to be as large as they want to be.  What I have a problem with is big business getting into bed with big government.

Unfortunately, as Michael Wade points out, for as accurate as the Huffington Post author is in his description of the problem of corporatism, he goes off the rails when he reaches his conclusion:

The sensible approach would be to recognize the problem and figure out a way to avoid it the best we can. Money always finds a way in, but we can at least be cognizant of the issue and try to combat it as much as possible. We must do this as citizens who care about our democracy, but we must also do it as capitalists.

Citizen vigilance is important, no doubt, but the real solution here is limited government.  We must take the power the government has over the economy away.  Then what point in buying off politicians when they lack the power to help you?

For all the liberals who decry the greedy big business types, the reality is that their big government philosophy is the genesis for corporatism.  Without big government, big business can’t buy protectionism.  With protectionism there is competition, and with competition the people win.