Who Do You Trust - Road to the Middle Class

EVERYONE seems to need a narrative of good against evil. Even people who don’t believe in God or in Satan. Take Noam Chomsky, scourge of US imperialism. In the lefty mockumentary The Corporation, he delicately compares corporations to slaveowners:

When you look at a corporation, just like when you look at a slaveowner, you want to distinguish between the institution and the individual. So slavery, for example, or other forms of tyranny, are inherently monstrous, but the individuals participating in them may be the nicest guys you can imagine... As individuals they may be anything. In their institutional role they are monsters because the institution is monstrous.

To place this in context, Noam Chomsky is discussing corporate CEOs laying off employees.

In Chomsky’s world, evil is a corporate layoff. Presumably the good is symbolized by government-financed university professors fighting for peace and justice.

Of course, conservatives are pushing the reverse narrative. To us, corporations are mostly beneficent institutions that occasionally make mistakes. But government is all about power, and so the recently passed health-care cram-down is canonical. No doubt the Reids, the Pelosis and the Obamas are the nicest chaps in the world. But in their institutional role as power politicians they are monsters. Because government is force, and force is monstrous. That’s why you need limited government.

The problem for conservatives is that, even in this center-right country, too many people seem to agree with Chomsky. They give the benefit of the doubt to government, but are outraged when corporations are less than perfect. Ask Toyota about that. Economist Gary Becker explains the problem to Peter Robinson in The Wall Street Journal:

People tend to impute good motives to government. And if you assume that government officials are well meaning, then you also tend to assume that government officials always act on behalf of the greater good. People understand that entrepreneurs and investors by contrast just try to make money, not act on behalf of the greater good. And they have trouble seeing how this pursuit of profits can lift the general standard of living.

The purpose of a video like The Corporation is to exploit this imputation. Trust the community; trust government. Don’t trust corporations.

If only it were true. Instead, politics is all about making big promises to get elected so you can get your hands on the levers of power. But business is all about giving the consumer what she wants, again and again; only then can you make big profits.

Still not convinced? The Prisoner’s Dilemma ought to convince you. It deals with the basic question of trust. Should you trust your fellow prisoner in the next cell, or rat on him? The decision, scholars agree, depends on whether this is the last time you will ever see your partner in crime. In the final transaction between two people, it pays to cheat. If the government is offering to let you disappear into the federal witness protection program in return for testimony then the decision is simple.

That’s the position of a politician running for election. If he doesn’t win he’ll never get to go before the voters again. He’ll promise anything and everything. But the relationship between you and the local supermarket is different. The supermarket wants you to come back again and again. They need your trust, and they need to renew it every day. That’s why they have such generous return policies.

The challenge to conservatives, after the ObamaCare cram-down, is simple. If we want to succeed in our quest of restoring limited government, we must persuade the American people of the truth: it is much better trust a businessman than a politician. If you want decent health care, then you don’t want the government involved: not if you don’t want a $30 trillion unfunded deficit. If you want decent education for your children, then you don’t want the government in the loop: your kid will need remedial classes when he gets to college. If you want to give the poor a hand up not a hand out, then you need to keep the government out of it; otherwise the government will end up smashing the low-income family.

Of course, if your idea of justice is to force the American people to pay for your education and your health care, then go ahead. Grow government.

These are exciting days for conservatives. There’s a smell of cordite in the air, and a sense that the tide of battle is shifting after four years of Democratic advance. But if we are to make more than a temporary counter-attack we need to change the narrative.

No, it’s not the insurance companies, it’s the government’s taxes and subsidies. It’s not the bankers, it’s the government’s credit policy.

The corporations con’t tell the American people. The liberals won’t. They trust government like they trust themselves.

So it’s up to us. It’s up to conservatives to tell the story. For our material needs, it’s better to trust corporations over government.

Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

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Action

The incentive that impels a man to act is always some uneasiness... But to make a man act [he must have] the expectation that purposeful behavior has the power to remove or at least to alleviate the felt uneasiness.
Ludwig von Mises, Human Action

Chappies

“But I saw a man yesterday who knows a fellow who had it from a chappie that said that Urquhart had been dipping himself a bit recklessly off the deep end.” —Freddy Arbuthnot
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison

China and Christianity

At first, we thought [the power of the West] was because you had more powerful guns than we had. Then we thought it was because you had the best political system. Next we focused on your economic system. But in the past twenty years, we have realized that the heart of your culture is your religion: Christianity.
David Aikman, Jesus in Beijing

Churches

[In the] higher Christian churches� they saunter through the liturgy like Mohawks along a string of scaffolding who have long since forgotten their danger. If God were to blast such a service to bits, the congregation would be, I believe, genuinely shocked. But in the low churches you expect it every minute.
Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm

Civil Society

“Civil Society”—a complex welter of intermediate institutions, including businesses, voluntary associations, educational institutions, clubs, unions, media, charities, and churches—builds, in turn, on the family, the primary instrument by which people are socialized into their culture and given the skills that allow them to live in broader society and through which the values and knowledge of that society are transmitted across the generations.
Francis Fukuyama, Trust

Class War

In England there were always two sharply opposed middle classes, the academic middle class and the commercial middle class. In the nineteenth century, the academic middle class won the battle for power and status... Then came the triumph of Margaret Thatcher... The academics lost their power and prestige and... have been gloomy ever since.
Freeman Dyson, “The Scientist as Rebel”

Conservatism

Conservatism is the philosophy of society. Its ethic is fraternity and its characteristic is authority — the non-coercive social persuasion which operates in a family or a community. It says ‘we should...’.
Danny Kruger, On Fraternity

Conservatism's Holy Grail

What distinguishes true Conservatism from the rest, and from the Blair project, is the belief in more personal freedom and more market freedom, along with less state intervention... The true Third Way is the Holy Grail of Tory politics today - compassion and community without compulsion.
Minette Marrin, The Daily Telegraph

Conversion

“When we received Christ,” Phil added, “all of a sudden we now had a rule book to go by, and when we had problems the preacher was right there to give us the answers.”
James M. Ault, Jr., Spirit and Flesh

Democratic Capitalism

I mean three systems in one: a predominantly market economy; a polity respectful of the rights of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and a system of cultural institutions moved by ideals of liberty and justice for all. In short, three dynamic and converging systems functioning as one: a democratic polity, an economy based on markets and incentives, and a moral-cultural system which is plural and, in the largest sense, liberal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

Drang nach Osten

There was nothing new about the Frankish drive to the east... [let] us recall that the continuance of their rule depended upon regular, successful, predatory warfare.
Richard Fletcher, The Barbarian Conversion

Education

“We have met with families in which for weeks together, not an article of sustenance but potatoes had been used; yet for every child the hard-earned sum was provided to send them to school.”
E. G. West, Education and the State

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