In general, there is a great deal more distrust of the market than of government. Many people put a lot more faith in government to solve problems and provide for us than in the free market.
Why is this? If you are one who has little or no faith in the market and instead trust the government to protect and provide for us, please tell me why.
I'm not baiting anyone for the purpose of blasting them, I just really want to get a handle on that side of this argument. That said, here are some lead-in questions and observations:
- Corporations are made up of people. Government is also made up of people. Both are subject to the same human shortcomings, desires, vices, etc. What makes one more or less trustworthy than the other?
- If your answer to the first question was something like, "Corporations are motivated by profits, and profits are evil." Then my question is, "What, then, motivates government?" Are the individuals in government somehow motivated by some higher or more legitimate cause? Are they somehow less corruptible than the individuals who make up a corporation?
My bet is that this is not likely. Politicians have to be motivated by something, and I'd stake my left nut on the bet that they're motivated by power. Now, it could be that they only desire power so they can "do good things", but it's power nonetheless, and being human means that they are corruptible...just as much so as the individuals who run corporations. In fact, they may be more susceptible than corporate shills simply because they stand to suffer little or no loss for their mistakes or outright corruption. At best, they receive a slap on the wrist for their wrongdoings. In a free market setting, however, there are numerous mechanisms to ensure that the costs of corporate corruption are born by those who are corrupt...until government interferes to shift those costs to taxpayers, of course. - Finally, if we don't trust the individuals in government any more than the individuals in corporations why do we keep putting government in charge of more and more of our money, freedom, and personal affairs?
Let the enlightenment begin!
2 comments:
I used to trust the government more than corporations, but the current administration has wildly changed my position on this. I now trust neither, and given the chance to design my own utopia, I would shrink gov't to the size of a pea, and make sure private businesses controlled more things but were also kept tiny.
Anyway, to the question at hand. I think the reason most people distrust business more than they distrust government is because most people have much less negative interaction with government (actually, they just have much less interaction with it in general). Sure, sometimes I see my tax money being used on things that infuriate me, but whether that's plowing a highway through my childhood playground, or the war in Iraq, it's all very indirect and it's reasonably infrequent.
But I have been directly abused by private businesses. And it seems to happen all the time. Sometimes it's little things, like Verizon fucking me out of $40 on my DSL, and sometimes it's major things like Aetna insurance trying to amputate my right leg instead of paying for "alternative" treatments.
If I made a list of all the times government pissed me off, it would be mostly of "transparent" things that don't amount to much more than grumbling and momentary frustration. But a list of things private business has done to piss me off would not only be much longer, everything on it would be intensely personal, would involve a noticeable loss of time and money, and would be an incident that made me feel more impotent than anything that's ever happened between me and the government.
So, what I think it comes down to is, regardless of how horrendous government often is, the travesties are far removed from most people's day to day lives. Meanwhile, the pain inflicted on us by businesses hits directly on our wallets, directly on our time, directly on our fear of not being able to control our own lives, and directly on the overall sense of our quality of life.
That's an excellent point, Mustapha! I must admit that hadn't occurred to me. Certainly, we've all had bad experiences with private businesses, and you're absolutely right that they have a much more direct impact on us as individuals than do the actions of government. What I think it's important to realize, though, is that government is what makes our abuse at the hands of private business so much more likely than it would be in a truly free market.
When we're treated badly by a business we tend to think it's a result of greed or indifference, and that may be true, but businesses who treat their customers badly won't survive for long in a free market. We have to ask ourselves, then, how it is that businesses can treat us like crap and still survive. 99% of the time it's because government has made it possible. Would Verizon fuck you out of $40 if they hadn't been granted the local communication utility monopoly by government? Would Aetna be looking for the most expedient, least expensive way to treat your leg if the health care/health insurance industry wasn't such a mess because of all the stifling regulation? They might, but my firm belief is that they wouldn't be so likely to do so in a truly free market.
I don't implicity trust businesses, either. I'm not delusional enough to think that absent government regulation business owners would all be benevolent and trustworthy and have my best interests at heart. I do believe, though, that competition and the search for profit provide incentives for businesses to treat their customers well, and government intervention only serves to stifle competition and remove those incentives.
All too often, when a business treats us badly we run to government to do something about it, and indeed that is the easiest and most expedient manner of dealing with a perceived problem. The right thing to do, though, is to be a responsible consumer and realize that you do have choices when dealing with a business. You can choose not to deal with a business that treats you badly. Sometimes that means going without a particular product or service or choosing a less attractive alternative, like using dial-up instead of DSL or foregoing health insurance and paying for medical services out of your own pocket. Those aren't necessarily good choices, but they're better choices than those offered by government, which usually consist of doing what they say or going to jail. We must realize that the more we involve government in our problems the more we invite abuse from businesses and from government itself.
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