Big Government et al

December 2, 2012

It has been about three weeks since I wrote anything in this blog. I keep thinking about topics to explore but never seem to get around to them. Well, today, a rainy, windy Sunday in early December, I decided to write.

I have noted that George F. Will and the Republican Party think that government is too big, that it stifles innovation, and taxes too much. Its very size is the problem, that is, if it shrank and left the public space it now occupies, entrepreneurs would flood in, produce wealth from their hard work and ideas, and thus increase tax revenues. However, this fear of bigness qua bigness is confined only to government. These men don't fear large corporations and large banks which would occupy the public space vacated by government. In order for these behemoths to exist, they too must stifle innovation for not all innovation is profitable. They would settle on one model which maximized profits and keep to that model - as have all large U.S. corporations and banks. As to stifling freedom, yes, governments must regulate large, populated communities and must continue to do so. We have to have restrictions on stock sales and trading as well as stop signs. Governments regulate what can and can't be sold to an unsuspecting public - we don't want batteries that blow up, tires that shred, rotted wood sold as new. But large corporations like the concept of the "market" which presumably would force shoddy merchandise off the shelves. But would it?

Besides, as John Kenneth Galbraith showed in 1967, no longer do corporate behemoths obey the buy-and-sell rules of markets. They create their own markets and pretty much set prices without regard to the public.

What I think these men want is for corporate America to run the economy, a corporate America that would protect itself first from any downturns or recessions. This means that the rhetoric about big government is really about power, who will control, who will set the rules, who will mete out justice, in our economy and in our polity.