by Andrew
In which I write about what people seem to have thought I was writing about when I talked about libertarian Democrats. For those looking to catch up, you can start here, here, and here.
While I am not really a libertarian, I do tend to distrust aggregations of power because, even if those power centers are necessary, they will attract people who wish to acquire power to impose their will. That is the case whether the power in question is a government, a corporation, a union, or even a mob. But I do reserve special care for government power over any other kind, and I believe there are good reasons for doing so.
We grant government a monopoly on the use of force. In a civilized society, it is inappropriate to initate the use of force (except in obvious cases of imminent danger). Only government agents are granted the power to initiate force legitimately, because ultimately it is force that underlies government, although in modern society that force is well-hidden because most citizens have internalized the rules of their society. Having given this power to government, it should surprise no one that people who seek to gain power for themselves will frequently seek out government office in order to do so. The power, after all, already exists, so a person seeking to impose his will on others can use the extant apparatus of government to do so without having to first create it. Bill Gates may have wielded a lot of power when he ran Microsoft, but he had to build it from the ground up. President Bush immediately inherited far greater power simply by winning (being declared the winner, if you prefer) the 2000 election.
Government also has a patina of legitimacy that most other forms of power lack. Few of us are foolish enough to believe that corporations won't act to serve their bottom line, regardless of the effects that may have on the rest of us. Nor are too many people still naive enough to believe that unions will act in the best interests of all (or even, necessarily, in the best interests of their members). But government has a legitimacy these other forms of power do not, because we insist on holding elections to choose who will serve in government. This is a wise precaution (although it tends to founder for lack of an informed electorate, but that's a topic for another time), because the assent of the people is a legitimate source of power, if properly restrained. We therefore tend to accept the use of government power in ways that would be more firmly resisted if attempted by other sources of power. This makes government power easier to abuse.
Government is also generally granted powers that would be grounds for prosecution if utilized by other power centers. Given the current climate concerning the federal government's power to monitor people's phone calls, imprison people for years without charge, torture suspected terrorists, and so on, one might think that questions about government power would be a bit more common than they are. But our culture has changed so greatly from our beginnings that the idea that maybe government shouldn't be allowed to do these things at all has little traction. Some are concerned only because they're worried what President Bush might do with those powers (just as some who rightly raised alarms about some things President Clinton did now turn a blind eye because they share party allegiance with the man in office). Many more, probably most, simply don't see any real danger with the government having those powers. And there are arguments to be made in favor of granting government some of the powers the Bush administration has taken to itself. None of those arguments apply, however, to a corporation or other power base. Government gets a special dispensation to do things that we would not tolerate from any other source.
American culture has changed a great deal since the closing years of the 19th century. Defenders of big government argue that corporations will return to their habits of a century ago if not vigorously restrained by activist government. While I'm confident that many large businesses would, if they thought they could get away with it, doing so is not as simple as some seem to think. Does anyone think that a business could get away with hiring people to physically assault their laborers in today's society? I am not a journalist, but that sounds like an awfully good story for the media to run with, and that kind of publicity would hardly help a business's bottom line. When you consider what businesses already do to avoid negative publicity, the idea they would throw those principles away to gain an advantage with their workers seems implausible at best.
This kind of thinking also assumes that shrinking the government would be done in such a way as to eliminate any government oversight over business. Even assuming that would be desirable, it would hardly be politically practical. Contrary to the beliefs of some, right-wingers are not particularly eager to return to the days when rivers could catch on fire and when nobody needed to fear drowning in the Hudson River because they would dissolve first. While we might favor redesigning the EPA to make it less burdensome, I would only support such changes if they were tied to stringent requirements to continue to reduce our environmental impact so we can all enjoy the beauty of nature for the foreseeable future. Nor would we support eliminating the police who would still be required to protect people from violence, such as the use of violence by business against its workers. This, indeed, is one of the primary functions of government: to protect people's rights, and there are few rights more fundamental than the right not to be physically assaulted. Even were libertarians to seize power, one of the last functions of government they would dismantle would be the police power, because that's one of the few functions of government that nearly all libertarians (less the anarcho-capitalists) agree on.
I would not suggest, and have not suggested, that we simply throw out the federal government and trust the good will of corporations. I make no argument in favor of the benign intentions of business; they exist to make money, and in that pursuit we can expect some of them to do everything they believe they can get away with in order to maximize their profits. Any concentration of power poses a threat to individual liberty.
But in today's society it seems crystal clear that the power possessed by government is of a wholly different nature than that possessed by any other power center. Government can do things no other organization can. It has more actual power in terms of armies and police, it has a veneer of respectability that no other organization can approach, and it has the advantage of cultural deferment to government power. Can businesses abuse their power? Absolutely. Can businesses in contemporary America do more damage than the United States Government? I look forward to someone on this site explaining to me how Bill Gates represents a greater threat to their liberties than President Bush.
Ultimately, this is an academic discussion for the United States. No state is going to voluntarily surrender power, and modern American culture tends to view the government's purview as virtually limitless. The discussion on the role of the government between liberals and libertarians reminds of nothing so much as the old W.C. Fields routine in which he approaches an attractive young woman and asks, "Would you sleep with me for $1 million?" She thinks about it and nods, "Sure, for $1 million, I'd do it." Fields then asks, "Would you sleep with me for $20?" The young lady slaps him and asks, "What kind of woman do you think I am?" Fields rejoinder: "We have already established that; now we're just haggling over price."
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