Best of the Blogs: State Power and Corporate Power
by The Editors
October 6th, 2006
One of key claims in Markos Moulitsas’ lead essay is that the growing power of corporations threatens individual liberties and that placing a check on corporate power is therefore a central task of government. Moulitsas approvingly quotes Daily Kos diarist hekebolos: “The fundamental reason that “libertarian” has become “libertarian democrat” is that corporations are becoming more powerful than governments.” This claim about the relative power of governments and corporations has spawned a great deal of intelligent commentary across the blogoshere
A number of libertarian bloggers have emphasized that corporate power rests on state power. Michael Hampton at Homeland Stupidty writes:
Moulitsas still cites corporate power over people as a problem, and still fails to recognize that corporations gain their undue power from government. Government is the enabler, empowering corporations to step on individuals and small businesses through both regulations and subsidies. It’s only by restraining government that corporations can be held in check, and it’s unfortuate that Moulitsas hasn’t figured this out yet.
Similarly, Mona at Inactivist says:
I suspect many will take at least some issue with him that corporations are at least as dangerous to liberty and fiscal restraint as is government; my own view is that corporations are dangerous only because of myriad federal laws and spending programs that create the trough at which they feed and empower them to cause mischief.
Andrew at Obsidian Wings provides an illustrative example:
The complaints Kos and hekebolos make above aren’t really a problem of corporations having too much power; they’re problems of government having too much power. A simple case in point: where my parents live, the local government recently passed a law stating that everyone with a septic tank would have to get the tank inspected annually. Interestingly enough, there is only one company in their town that inspects septic tanks. That company isn’t forcing my parents to use their services, however: the local government is. The same is true with most complaints that a corporation is ‘forcing’ someone to do something. What is really happening is that the corporation has spent money to get the government to force people to do something that will benefit the corporation. I would submit that the solution to improper use of government power is not necessarily the agglomeration of additional power to the government to prevent such abuses.
This is the kind of talk that makes at least this nominal libertarian very wary of Democrats.
Trent McBride at Catallarchy even offers a free copy of David Friedman’s anarcho-capitalist classic The Machinery of Freedom to anyone who can “Persuade [him] that corporate (coercive) power, to the extent that it exists, does not rest on governmental power at its foundation.”
Lizardbreath at Unfogged doesn’t take up McBride’s challenge, agreeing with the general principle that corporate and state power are intertwined, but is wary of the further libertarian argument that the way to weaken corporate power is to weaken state power:
This critique is true as far as it goes — corporations can’t jail you or take your property away without state assistance or at least toleration of their behavior — but I don’t think it gets you to the libertarian position: that ‘reducing the power of the state’ will make people freer, because if the state hasn’t got the power, than corporations can’t co-opt it. In practice, it’s not clear to me that ‘reducing the power of the state’ is possible, short of a literal anarchy in which the government has no police powers at all. When people talk about reducing the power of government, they generally seem to be talking about simplifying government: fewer regulations, fewer agencies. But no matter how simple government gets, it’s going to retain the power to punish crime, and to decide disputes about property ownership in the courts — it has just as much power, the power is simply exercised in less complex ways. And once it has those powers, and no more, that’s enough for corporations to co-opt in ways that make individuals less free.
Lizardbreath cites Dave Weman of Blagdaross, who also resists the move from state-corporate collusion to a libertarian argument for smaller government:
As a good liberal (in the proper sense), I’m well aware that the state is dangerous, but you can’t make the governement less dangerous by making it smaller.
And so the debate continues…
October 6th, 2006 at 11:48 am
[...] So should we join with Democrats? No. Although the Republican party has flagrantly betrayed its vows to the free market time and time and time again, the Democrats have shown no such infidelity to their anti-market principles. They continue to be wedded to the basic notion that society must be changed by government ub a perverse attempt to liberate individuals—an error that conflates two basically different definitions of “power”: governmental power (which is based on force) and economic power (which is not). So long as they continue confusing these two different principles, modern liberals cannot be more effective voices for liberty. Kos himself falls into this trap even while trying to woo libertarians—when he says that corporations are “too powerful.” Many other blogs have called him out on this basic error. Corporate power, insofar as it is a genuine concern, always proceeds from government, through some corporate-government alliance. Eminent domain abuse is only the most obvious example of that. Insofar as it is not a genuine concern, corporate “power” proceeds only from the wealth of a corporation, which is a function of the voluntary transactions in the marketplace. Antitrust persections, for example, are often aimed at businesses that have exercised no coercion at all, but are being attacked for their very “bigness,” which is simply a result of that business’ success at satisfying consumers. [...]