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Monday, February 15, 2021

NPR: Is Business More Nimble And More Effective Than Government?

How did we get to this point, where NPR asks a "capitalism expert" this question?  The intro was that corporations were cutting off campaign contributions to legislators who supported Trump's big lie about the election and the insurrection. 

"SACHA PFEIFFER, BYLINE: I want to reel off some of the ways that the corporate hammer has been coming down recently. We saw Dominion and Smartmatic sue former President Trump's allies for lying about their voting machines. We saw companies, including American Express and Morgan Stanley, suspending their donations to key Republican lawmakers. The PGA pulled its tournament from a Trump golf resort. I see this happen, and it makes me think that the corporate response to political controversy has been more nimble and possibly more effective than the government one - effective if you disagree with what these politicians were doing. Am I fair to view it that way?"

Here's a link to the whole piece. 

Let's start with the most obvious thing that Sacha Pfeiffer missed here.   The very fact that she points to corporations withdrawing campaign funding from politicians who supported the lies, should have tipped her off to the answer:   politicians aren't independent of their corporate funders.  

Maybe a better question would have been, "Why didn't the corporations let the politicians know they disapproved of the ex-president's lies and fomenting an insurrection before the impeachment votes?"


Sacha Pfeiffer also conflated elected federal officials with government.  They are just one, small, if powerful, part of the vast  federal government. But these are elected officials, not the people who actually carry out government functions.  These corporations got most of the Republican House and Senate members AND the president elected in the first place.  But the career employees of the government - whether in the CDC or other health agencies, or in the State Department, or in the military, or the post office  have been doing their best to keep serving the people of the United States, despite the corporate funded politicians.

And, as I've pointed out here before, there are many, many governments in the US.  From Wikipedia:

Governments in the United States[1]

(not including insular areas)

TypeNumber
Federal1
State50
County3,034
Municipal (citytownvillage...) *19,429
Township (in some states called Town) **16,504
School district13,506
Special purpose
(utility, fire, police, library, etc.)
35,052
Total87,576

For NPR to seriously pose the basic question "Is business more effective than government?' shows us how far to the Right NPR has moved.  This is the argument conservatives have been making for years. It's their argument for making government as small as possible. And yes, corporations can be more nimble than governments at many decisions, simply because one person has the power to decide:  a CEO supported by a Board of Directors who picked him (I use the male pronoun because that's still the vast majority and yes it can be more complicated than that).  The US House has 435 people and the Senate 100 who all have an equal vote in every decision.  And businesses and governments have very different goals.  One goal of government is to provide those things that corporate America can't - like take care of the people who don't have the money to purchase corporate America's products, from food, to health care, to housing.  

There's lots and lots of things to discuss on this topic, but trying to focus directly on this particular segment, my last issue is that Sacha Pfeiffer turned to a person she described as a 'capitalism expert."  Why?  Why not have a different kind of economist?  Why not ask a 'government expert?" Why not have more than one person to respond?   I don't know what else her expert said that got cut out, but I would reiterate the most glaring omission:

The corporations can make these decisions faster than the politicians because corporations own most if not all of the Republican Senators and House members (and at least a part of many Democrats.)  

The fact that they can have an effect by withdrawing their campaign funding should make this point obvious.  

The real question should have been: why didn't they tell their political shills what they wanted before the politicians voted on Saturday? 

The 'capitalism expert' probably hinted at the answer to this unasked question when he said, they act on profits, not principles.  I'd guess they didn't know how all this was going to play out.  So they didn't know until it was pretty much over how it all might affect their profits.  It wasn't until they saw for themselves the House Impeachment Team's case.  

So, in fact, they didn't actually respond much faster themselves.  Otherwise they could have leaned on their bought politicians to vote for conviction.  

4 comments:

  1. So theres 87000 governing bodies, which are supposed to work in unison and harmony? Oh my, how the gods must be laughing at us. Such absurd mammals we are.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. What makes you think they should all work in unison and harmony? There are advantages and disadvantages to centralization and decentralization. Let's look at benefits of decentralization:
      1. local decision makers know the local issues and conditions much better than those in a distant headquarters. Say, local road clearing boards are a lot more responsive (faster and better solutions) than having DC official trying to make sure snow plows are working
      2. many different entities allow for experiments with innovation without jeopardizing everything. If something works in one or two cities or states, others may copy. If it fails, then the failure was contained in a state or two.
      3. Different jurisdictions means if one government (say the feds) go crazy, the others are independent and can challenge them. Feds don't control local police or school boards, for instance. So some local police refused some cooperation with Homeland Security over immigrant removal. The feds have lots of power because they give money, but ultimately the states and cities can refuse the money if they sincerely disagree. Democracy has a better chance with lots of independent governmental units.

      There are some advantages to centralization - particularly dealing with problems that are cross jurisdictional like pollution.
      There are also lots of organizations that facilitate cooperation among the entities for when that is needed. Not as ridiculous as you might think. I know that after spending a year working for a federal agency and then a couple of years working for a city, I found that the feds were very distant from the people they served and the city people interacted with their people all the time. The feds were very professional and did macro level planning and coordinating, but did not get daily feedback about what they did the way local administrators get.

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    2. Agreed.

      My comment was a vague attempt at humor, to distract me from the side effects of my second vaccination (horribly unpleasant experience 4 weeks ago after first shot, but it seems the 2nd round's side effects are, thankfully, noticably less.)

      I enjoy your blog btw.

      Delete
  2. Sorry I missed the humor. A problem with this sort of anonymous comment is that I don't know who is writing and whether they are serious or not. But then that is helpful to remind me to make comments I make as clear as possible. Sarcasm often needs it's own punctuation mark. Glad you enjoy visiting here. Thanks for commenting.

    ReplyDelete

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