LVMI's curious blindness to corporate statism and the rot caused by limited liability, or, Jeffrey Tucker has fun with central planning
Jeffrey Tucker‘s February 9 Mises Daily post, Obama on Auto-Defrosting Refrigerators, is perfectly fine and unobjectionable (quibbles aside about Jeffrey’s startling misunderstanding of Obama’s claims regarding the entirely voluntary EnergyStar program), spokesmen for government always oversell government’s accomplishments).
But being an ornery and objectionable cuss, I couldn’t resist commenting on what Jeffrey left out. (Where’s the beef?!, as I believe some old lady famously asked).(emphasis and minor tweeks added):
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Government regulations have made a mess of our daily lives. Whether it is banning effective products or mandating inferior functionality in our appliances and fixtures, government’s role here is indisputably to degrade our quality of life.
Jeffrey, I’m sorry, but while you are certainly correct that government regulations have made a mess of our daily lives, your conclusion that “government’s role here is indisputably to degrade our quality of life” is extremely shallow, and the rest of your discussion suffers as a result.
While a great deal of stupidity accompanies government, why do you ignore the cupidity that DRIVES government? You know, the cupidity that drives the elites who always dominate the use of government, the self-interest that influences the decision-making of administrators, bureaucrats and employees, and the cupidity that drives the rent-farming by politicians? Are not the powerful corporations that use government to pick consumers’ pockets and to create barriers to entry worthy of mention?
And why no discussion of dynamics? We have a regulatory state not simply because we have elites, politicians and bureaucrats who wish to extend their control and purview, but because we have governments that create risk-shifting corporate machines whose owners have no downside liability for corporate misdeeds. By the simple act of granting corporate status, governments have set off cycles of social damage, growing demands for government action by citizens to “do something”, a growing “agency problem” as government interventions increase management independence from shareholders, growing opportunities for a socially irresponsible corporate elite, bureaucratic and political manipulation, and growing partisanship battle for control of the wheel (including fights over CSR and tort reform) and of the spoils of our increasingly top-heavy system.
Yes, we still have competition in the marketplace. But the reason we don’t have MORE freedom is not just “stupid government” by self-serving central planners who don’t understand the marketplace; the real reason is that that we have elites who used the grant of limited liability corporate status to avoid personal responsibility and to mask their depredations, and then further use their concentrated power to control government.
More thoughts here:
http://mises.org/Community/blogs/tokyotom/archive/2007/10/16/fighting-over-the-wheel-of-government.aspx
http://mises.org/Community/blogs/tokyotom/archive/2010/07/06/the-cliff-notes-version-of-my-stilted-enviro-fascist-view-of-corporations-and-government.aspx
http://mises.org/Community/blogs/tokyotom/search.aspx?q=limited+liability
Merely pointing out the stupidity of our court intellectuals does nothing to strike at the roots of our problems, and certainly is not persuasive to leftists who think that more government is the only solution to corporate risk-shifting and rent-seeking.
Kind regards,
Tom