Where the Libertarians and Socialists Agree

Doug Mataconis explains the huge difference between free enterprise and government-supported capitalism:

There’s a distinct difference between the free market and the state-aided corporate capitalism that we live with today. When businessmen use the state to protect themselves from competition, or from their own wrongdoing, that’s not free market capitalism. When they pay lobbyists to get the Federal Government to subsidize them, whether directly or indirectly, that’s not free-market captialism. When they help write the laws that they then use to hamper competition, that’s not free-market capitalism.

Many on the right make the mistake of thinking that believing in capitalism means that you’re obligated to defend the actions of the capitalists, but when those actions involve using the state to evade the discipline of the market, you’re no longer defending the market, you’re helping to destroy it.

He’s exactly right. There is a vital difference between a government that acts as a referee to ensure rights are preserved so that everyone can compete, and a gang of bureaucrats who prop up well-connected citizens so that they can unfairly compete with everyone else. It’s very easy to beat out the competition when you have the backing of a well- armed institution with virtually unlimited resources.

Anger over corporate welfare is an issue that many socialists also get angry about, and rightly so. But what I don’t understand is why, in the face  government influence that keep the upper class rich and the lower class poor, socialists prescribe more government intervention to “fix the broken system.” Kind of sounds like pouring gasoline on the fire to me.

Instead, we should follow the roadmap that was agreed upon more than 200 years ago and strike down laws that allow well-healed citizens the ability to use government force to gain advantages over others through in the marketplace. More government will not hold these people accountable. It will only make it worse. What we need is a government that does its job and offers due process to everyone, not just the ones who can afford a lobbyist in Washington.