Little Wallet. Big World.

The prevailing social climate suggests that the word "Big," put in front of everything, is arguably bad. Let's take a look at some of the bogeymen that pervade our popular lexicon:

• Big Business
• Big Tobacco
• Big Banking
• Big Media
• Big Government

Opponents of such things derogatorily use the term when they're trying to incite public opinion against others. Typically (but not always), those who rail against what they describe in the first three groups are the same folks who are in or advocate the third and fourth.

Of the five groups, I've always tended to be more ambivalent to the first three than I have been to the last two, simply because they have the fewest opportunities to compel me to do anything.

• Wal-Mart may be a big business, but I am not forced to shop there.
• Phillip Morris may have a huge tobacco empire, and tobacco may be harmful to my health, but I'm not forced to smoke or to be around people who do, if I found the practice obnoxious.
• Bank of America may have one of the world's largest banks, but I have plenty of options at my disposal if I did not care to use their services.

Freedom to Act
In each of these cases, I have meaningful choices. Collectively we determine the success of these enterprises, but someone else's choices, if he were to make different decisions, do not compel me to behave in the same manner as he.

By contrast, big government can compel both business and individuals to do any number of things. All they require is the full force of the law, the power to compel others, and either the willful compliance or apathetic acquiescence of the body of the people to get away with it.

In U.S. society, the durable power to compel is established through the Constitution of the various governments, and the particular powers and laws established under them represent the generational interests of society. However, the powers and laws of each generation have increasingly been created and enforced without respect to the durable law of the people.

Foxes and Hens: Natural Enemies
"That's democracy," you say.

But two foxes and a hen sitting around a dinner table voting on what's for dinner is not a durable basis for justice. A well heeled hen may be able to buy off the foxes for a while, but eventually all foxes reveal their true nature.

The Responsibility to Make a Profit
One would think that big businesses would recoil at the prospect of sharing a dinner table with those who can crush and are likely to eat them, but we've seen instead that they are more inclined to lie in bed with the foxes than try to fight them off.

In the short run, it's far less expensive to cope with unjust regulations than it is to fight them. Both turning public opinion and litigation are costly matters, especially when one of your opponents controls the lion's share of the media and the other can coerce even the unwilling to pay for investigations (no matter how rigged) and lawyers.

But large businesses have another motivation: The more regulations government passes, the more expensive it is to comply. The more expensive it is to comply, the better insulated larger businesses are against smaller competitors.

In other words, big businesses just stay big, or get bigger -- until at last the regulations by which they are bound strangle them out of existence, and government either lets them fail or "rescues" them with taxpayer money, with big business CEOs' willing hands extended, claiming they are "too big to fail," frightening just enough people to assent to the handout.

Just as Ayn Rand Predicted.
In this way, big business becomes virtually indistinguishable from big government in that, instead of relying on liberty-based market forces to determine their success or failure, they are able to manipulate the money right out of taxpayer hands, without respect to each person's individual choices to buy or not buy the products they make.

Everything has a cost, and sometimes we have to admit to ourselves that we can't afford it. The world is just too big to pay for everything for everybody.

We can mask the costs through layers of bureaucracy, but we cannot eliminate them. When we allow individual freedom to choose winners and losers in commerce, we can identify success and failure by the market's reaction to the collective personal choices each person willingly expresses for himself through his pattern of consumption. 

Or we can take the position of the foxes sitting at the dinner table -- eager to take from others something that by right does not belong to us -- all the while claiming moral superiority behind a specious ruse of "democracy." 

You can call that a lot of things, but it isn't liberty. - Cam Beck   

Comments

[Jonathan Burg]

This reminds me of Howard Stern's initial response to the FCC way back when - I have the right to speak as I want to, and you have the right not to listen.

There is an invisible hand behind marketing. Marketers have the right to do as they please (so long as they don't break the law). There is rarely a shortage of supply, and in economies of choice it is up to the user to define value.