There’s an idea that’s been going around lately that the left vs. right dichotomy which, after all, was first used to describe the Estates-General in the aftermath of the French Revolution more than 200 years ago, is obsolete and that the real battle is corporatist vs. individualist. Is today’s New York Times editorial on the Supreme Court another instance of that claim?
The Roberts court has championed corporations. The cases it has chosen for review this term suggest it will continue that trend. Of the 51 it has so far decided to hear, over 40 percent have a corporation on one side. The most far-reaching example of the Roberts court’s pro-business bias was Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. By a 5-to-4 vote, the conservative justices overturned a century of precedent to give corporations, along with labor unions, an unlimited right to spend money in politics.
If the choice is between corporatist and collectivist, I can’t say I relish either alternative. Rather like being given the choice between being shot or hanged.
I think think the real conflict is between large and small. Big Government, Big Business, Big Labor, Big Pharma, etc. are natural allies.
They are all part of what we can loosely describe as the corporatist side. Unions are anti-individual. Big business is anti-individual. Big government is anti-individual.
And the individualist side is at a distinct disadvantage because of several factors, but the first is that the individualist position is inherently going to be opposed to working together and there will be a problem with free riding to a much greater degree than with corporations since there are far more individuals than there are big corporations in any given industry.
One of the things Mancur Olsen found in his research on this was that groups that only provide benefits to active participants have fewer issues with free ridership. It seems that this works more for the corporation side than the individualist side.
These problems and the fact that the corporatist side has money and already people in positions of power (look at everyone in office right now and I bet many of them either come from big business or will go there when they leave). They essentially have a head start. Big business and big government go hand-in-hand, regulatory capture is indeed a serious issue and one that all too often is ignored by those who favor expanding government to greater and greater levels.
My personal view is we’ve already lost.
“By a 5-to-4 vote, the conservative justices overturned a century of precedent to give corporations, along with labor unions, an unlimited right to spend money in politics.”
Sigh. This statement is false about three-times over (no century of precedent and the right to spend money is limited to independent expenditures and disclosure and disclaimer laws).
The real divide here is that the Liberal members of the court felt that the requirement for corporations to make expenditures through a PAC was not an expensive or burdensome requirement. The Conservative members thought that most corporations are too small and have too few resources to maintain a lobbying presence.
To that list I would Big Wealth. Those folks control Big Business and Big Government. I would also think that small business would be opposed to Big Business, but keeps siding with it for unclear reasons.
Otherwise, I find this idea intriguing, but am not sold on it yet completely. I think that Big Business has always tried to use government to further its ends, so I am not sure this is new.
Steve
OT: I don’t know if you’ve seen this, but he’s singing your song.