Over at Cato, David Boaz writes about The Divide between Pro-Market and Pro-Business. (I’ve also linked to Boaz’s post at my libertarian website, Daily Adams.)
Boaz observes that, too often, business (especially big business) is an opponent of free markets:
In 2014 big business opposed several of the most free-market members of Congress, and even a Ron Paul-aligned Georgia legislator who opposed taxpayer funding for the Atlanta Braves.
The U.S. chamber jumped into a Republican primary in Grand Rapids, Mich., to try to take down Rep. Justin Amash, probably the most pro-free-enterprise and most libertarian member of Congress. Free-market groups, including the Club for Growth, Freedomworks and Americans for Prosperity, strongly backed Mr. Amash.
And now the chamber plans to spend up to $100 million on the 2016 campaign. Roll Call, a Capitol Hill newspaper, reports, “Some of business’ top targets in 2016 will be right-wing, tea party candidates, the types that have bucked the corporate agenda in Congress by supporting government shutdowns, opposing an immigration overhaul and attempting to close the Export-Import Bank.” Politico adds a highway bill to big business’ list of grievances against fiscal conservatives.
This clash between pro-market and pro-business is an old one. Adam Smith wrote “The Wealth of Nations” to denounce mercantilism, the crony capitalism of his day. Milton Friedman said at a 1998 conference: “There’s a common misconception that people who are in favor of a free market are also in favor of everything that big business does. Nothing could be further from the truth.”
Locally, which side would one choose, in a contest between (a) Smith, Hayek, & Friedman on one side, and (b) on the other side the economic manipulations of the WEDC, UW-Whitewater chancellor, Whitewater city manager, Community Development Authority, and (with some of the same ‘development’ gurus) the Greater Whitewater Committee business lobby?
Honest to goodness, that’s no choice at all.
When one contends in support of free markets, doing the best one can to understand, apply, and defend the arguments of Smith, Hayek, Friedman, et al., one embraces a tradition incomparably superior to the crude, deceptive, and ineffectual manipulation of the economy to the benefit of a few, favored businesses.
One can be confident about this not because there’s anything special about oneself (in my case there certainly isn’t), but because the tradition of which one is a proponent is vastly better than the views of those on the other side.
A strong tradition uplifts its advocates; a weak tradition diminishes its adherents. Personality doesn’t matter more than sound principle; sound principle creates the world in which personality, of whatever type, may be freely expressed and enjoyed.