The Other Half of the Story

I don’t disagree with John Tamny that John Malone, John D. Rockefeller, Steve Jobs, Keith Richards, and the others he cites worked hard and took risks. However, I don’t think he’s telling the whole story.

So, for example, he doesn’t mention cable TV’s dependency on local monopolies and its symbiotic relationship with local governments, John D. Rockefeller’s paying someone to serve for him in the Civil War while he built his business on the bones of companies that struggled because of the war and Standard Oils’s illegal use of monopoly power, corporate espionage, and exploitation of the legal system, that Apple Computer only survived because of the copyright system and its enforcement in the courts (see Franklin Computer), and that the Rolling Stones depended on copyrights for their livings while becoming tax refugees from the system on which they were dependent. I don’t begrudge any of them what they earned from hard work and entrepeneurship. I do begrudge them the difference between that and what they earned on top of it through cowardice, sharp trading, rent-seeking, illegal conduct, and evasion.

Bringing that story forward to the present day I don’t begrudge today’s Wall Street bankers what they’ve earned from hard work. My neighborhood is a favorite for commodities traders so, goodness knows, I’m aware that traders work hard. They’re frequently burned out after a few years.

However, I do begrudge them the difference between what their hard work has earned and what they’ve realized due to subsidies. How many of the .1% would be bankrupt without those subsidies or the lax enforcement of regulations? That’s the other half of the story.