The big business-government divide is more complicated than you think.
American politics operates on many different axes, from conservative-progressive to populist-elitist. But one underappreciated axis is what one might call the public-private axis. At one end are the private-sector partisans who favor Big Business over government. Privateers, if you will, prefer government policies that give large businesses free rein to conduct their affairs as they see fit. Private enterprises get official recognition as partners with the government both as contractors and occasionally as insurers when the government needs help. Put abstractly, banks, media, and other industries get to be the prime movers of world events if they can achieve that level of growth, and Privateers see this as part of a natural, and even good, order.
At the other end is a vocal camp that seeks to reassert the government’s power over Big Business. Among these Publicans (again, if you will indulge me) are critics of “coin-flip capitalism,” a term for financial institutions profiting handsomely not by producing anything but from, essentially, gambling on other companies. Publicans tend to believe that government, which registers corporations and provides them with relevant tax benefits, can direct private enterprise to advance the public welfare by nudging them toward constructive ways of earning their revenue and other practices that favor American workers, production of nationally useful goods, and other public concerns. When frustrated, they will rail against “oligarchs” of private industry who, they claim, look out for their own wealth and power to the detriment of the nation. This trend has crossed partisan lines, with progressives and conservatives alike, if for different reasons, criticizing government for letting Big Business push it around.
Continue reading the entire piece here at The Dispatch (paywall)
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Tal Fortgang is an adjunct fellow at the Manhattan Institute. He was a 2023 Sapir Fellow.
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