<Very few of Smith's examples of government intervention in the marketplace were initiated by government. The large majority of the examples he cites were demands by powerful business interests for preferential treatment: Tariffs, licensing and certification requirements, tax breaks for the supplicant and tax disadvantages for his competitor, unnecessary monopoly (e.g., foreign trade controlled by a charter company), arguments that this or that industry is vital to the national security/defense/welfare and must be protected, domestic content laws (in Smith's day too), special taxes and assessments on new entrants to a marketplace, specious charges of monopoly leveled against a dominant player (shades of Microsoft)...I got the distinct feeling that there's nothing new under the sun.

With increasing economic power and therefore political power, the forces of the market become increasingly asymmetrical. Spending a little of that wealth on influencing government is an insurance policy, designed to make the forces of downward correction relatively weaker than the power of upward progress. The more wealth, the better the insulation, and the more wealth becomes self-sustaining for no better reason than that it exists. The free market is thus defeated.

While you fret that the people will take unfair advantage of government power, business has a long historical record of doing just that. When you call for the government to step aside and let business do its thing, consider carefully what thing you're unleashing.



You make an excellent point, and one that is sometimes overlooked by conservatives. The increase in government control over economic matters is often a cooperative effort by "private" businesses. And one should add to your list above the straight-out looting of "corporate welfare" programs.

For every honest company who donates campaign contributions only to try to keep the government from destroying them, there are probably a dozen companies funneling money into government in order to use it as a weapon against competition or its own incompetence.* Like you say, this concept is as old as commerce itself.

There is really only one long-term solution for this: remove the power of the government to interfere in the economy.

We can fix this situation only by separation of economic and political power in the same way that religion and political power are ideally separated. When I ask government to "step aside," that is exactly what I mean. Without government force to draw on, even the largest company would be impotent other than in purely economic terms. The phrase, "increasing economic power and therefore political power" would be meaningless.

I ain't holding my breath for this to happen.

Someone wrote once, (I forget who) something along these lines: "When the legislature is given control over what is bought and sold, the first thing to be bought and sold will be legislators."

*It remains to be seen which category Microsoft will end up in. I'd like to think it still remains in the first, "self-defense" category, but for how long? In any case, Microsoft donated almost $5 million to candidates of both parties last year--two thirds to Republicans-- plus paying $6 million to lobbyists.

In the fall of 1997, when Clinton first began his attack on Microsoft, the company had one lobbyist working out of an office above a shopping mall, and the total of all political contributions was $100,000. Democrats may yet regret waking this sleeping giant.