Corporatocracy Is Not Conservative
Commitment to limited government is pointless if it does not prevent oppression.
Conservatism must abandon the cry for limited government.
The world used to be such that the greatest threat of oppression and tyranny came from the government, but that is not true today. Over the past several decades, the power of non-governmental entities has been continually increasing, and in some respects their power exceeds—or at least threatens—that of governments.
The corporate landscape that defines our reality should not be likened to the traditional concept of private enterprise; it more closely resembles what we call oligarchy. Corporations and CEOs have done more to limit individual liberty than our politicians have done at almost any point in this country’s history.
Financial institutions and corporate Political Action Committees stopped processing donations to some conservatives after the Capitol protest in January. Social media companies banned the former President of the United States from using their platforms to communicate with the public—several banks and other organizations have ceased all business with him as well, effectively making him an unperson.
When has the government ever taken such drastic measures to ostracize effectively half of its people? And if corporations can do it to a former president, what’s going to stop them from doing it to you? Certainly not your staunch defense of their right to do it.
Conservatives have a bad habit of giving a stamp of approval to any tyranny as long as it doesn’t come from a government chamber, and that habit only breeds more tyranny. That is, a less free society. In the same way that strict parents often produce children that are all-the-more devious, so does conservatives’ intense insistence against government tyranny and for free enterprise; a crafty government will contract the latter to escape conservatives’ gaze.
We are undoubtedly seeing this happen before our eyes. The policy changes within our corporations are not simply affecting what happens with their own property, they are affecting the extent to which members of society can live freely themselves.
The censorship on Facebook and Twitter is less like a movie theater removing noisy viewers from its own premises and more like a private company purchasing all public parks and then regulating who may enter. Worse still, the Biden administration has recently admitted to “flagging posts for Facebook” (emphasis mine to indicate the intonation of the original audio) so that they can censor whatever they consider to be “disinformation.”
Vaccine passports for commercial stores is less like, “No, go up the road for business,” and more like, “Do what we say or die, because we’ve eliminated all your other options.” Government rules for COVID-19 have facilitated the largest wealth transfer in history,
“Global billionaire total wealth has increased more over the past 17 months of the pandemic than it did in the 15 years prior to the pandemic. Between 2006 and 2020, global billionaire wealth increased from $2.65 trillion to $8 trillion, a gain of $5.35 trillion.”
That’s over 20% of America’s national debt. While the rich become ever richer, “millions have lost their lives and livelihoods.”
Giant corporations were able to lobby the government throughout the pandemic to continue operating, but their mom-and-pop competition languished for their lack of resources. The novel coronavirus has only benefited the country’s corporations, to the point that they have a legitimate foothold in the business of governance.
Historically, the appropriate response has been, “Well, just start your own enterprise! If nobody likes what other companies are doing, they’ll happily take their business elsewhere!” But what happens if nobody else can afford to offer an alternative to the corporations? Surely nobody else is as prepared to operate brick-and-mortar stores at a loss to starve their competition.
Combine that challenge with the coordinated effort to exclude certain political partisans, and a traditional conservative is left with such responses as, “Just create your own bank!” “Just create your own airline!” “Just create your own Internet service provider!”—but even those are being driven into the ground—“Just create your own—” what, your own Internet??
Is that the future that conservatives want to defend?
Yet, it seems that way. Governor Noem of South Dakota penned a cliché argument that “conservative principles demand we restrain government.” In it, she appeals several times to the Constitution and the potential for retaliation, but nowhere does she explain what all these efforts toward limited government have actually conserved. What are these ‘conservative principles’ conserving?
The cry of Noem is the cry that many conservatives have been making throughout the COVID-19 pandemic,
“Once we, as a people, open the door to increased government power to put mandates on businesses, expect a Pandora’s Box of liberal mandates to hit in the future.”
The problem is, those liberal mandates have already hit, even without conservatives making the first move. Noem herself recognizes this,
“Since March of 2020, we’ve seen governors from California to New York declare that they have sweeping powers to ban activities, close businesses, and strongarm sick people into nursing homes. These ‘leaders’ must have temporarily forgotten the principle that the proper powers of government are limited, even (and especially) during a crisis.”
Yet she still insists—as many conservatives do—that we shouldn’t use big government to fight big government.
But big government isn’t the enemy; tyranny is the enemy. If big government is what it takes to conserve individual liberty, then big government—used properly—is the conservative response to encroaching tyranny.
The government (or more traditionally, the State) is the entity that has a rightful monopoly on the use of force in society, or at least it is the only entity that can determine which uses of force are acceptable in society. Today, we see corporations usurping this power for political advantage, meaning that the State is expanding past the actual “government.”
For conservatives to allow this co-opting—or, more accurately, usurpation—of power is to abandon everything about conservatism. Conservatism isn’t just about “the government;” it’s about the State.
If we allow the State to transform into a corporatocracy, then we only like the appearance of constitutionalism. However, if we prevent corporations from instituting tyranny as a State, then we truly honor the Constitution and understand its intent. The time has come to choose which you value more.
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