(This is the first in a two part post on the Occupy movement)
Imagine a frail elderly lady hires a coldblooded assassin to kill her daughter-in-law. Should a coward learn of these events and feel the need to make some public display of outrage, which do you suppose he will confront: the coldblooded killer or the frail old lady? Oh, I suppose you can reasonably enough argue that the frail old lady is nearly (maybe even equally) as culpable as the assassin. But I bet we know which of the two the coward will ostentatiously make a public display of confronting: the one who poses no real threat to his callow pretence of false bravery.
Well that’s pretty much how I feel about the Occupy Wall Street (and everywhere else) movement. Certainly, many large, wealthy businesses spend lavish sums of money to buy politicians, no one doubts this. That, of course, is a two way street: politicians equally as avidly shakedown businesses, with visits to their CEOs and Board Chairs to discuss upcoming legislation and how it might hurt them, and no one wants that, so let’s cultivate an open channel of communication. And, wouldn’t it be good if I could stay in power and continue to look out for you in these matters? A donation to my re-election campaign would go a long way in protecting your interests.
It’s a scummy business all around, there is no question. However, the fact is, it is the state – its bureaucrats and politicians – who wield the guns; who use the violence that keeps milking the tax cows (i.e., the rest of us), and enforcing the regulations, tariffs, anti-immigration laws and bailouts that spare their collaborators from open competition. The state is the hired muscle in this story. Without the state to exercise its threat or use of violence, the biggest, richest, businesses in the world are just clumsy giants with legs of sand. Crippled by the debilitating conservatism that comes with success and the diseconomies of scale that come with size, they are fresh pickings for every new innovator and entrepreneur on the block with a better idea, a better product, a cost saving service, that will have consumers fleeing the dated for the better.
The evil corporations about which the Occupiers wail are the frail old ladies in this story. Without the state to do their dirty work for them, they are powerless. On genuinely free markets, they would be at the whims of every customer with a dollar to spend (or save). All that stands between them and the oblivion of the free and open competition which would bring them down, like every Goliath before every David with a better idea, are the guns and the will to use them that is the state.
Do the Occupiers, though, protest the state? Do they confront the coldblooded killer: the assassin? No, they camp out in the old lady’s front yard and pretend to be all bold and principled. And when she calls in the local constabulary because they’re trampling her rose garden, they get all puffed up because they’re taking on The Man. Yet, what do they demand to be done about the frail old lady? They demand that the coldblooded killer is given more power so that in the future he will be better able to deal with frail old ladies. One is hard pressed to choose between their breathtaking courage and their incalculable wisdom. Meanwhile, the frail old lady, from her rocking chair, glances out her living room window with bemusement at the gaggle of self-styled insurgents camping in her front yard, confident that next time she needs someone wacked, her trusty assassin will be ready at hand.
Perhaps, though, I’m wrong, maybe the Occupiers aren’t cowards; maybe they don’t understand the actual relations of power, here. If that’s the case, then they are nothing but the misdirecting gesture in a magician’s sleight of hand. They are the house-fools of the killers, and the frail old ladies who would be powerless without them.
Cowards or fools, the overwhelming majority of Occupiers have it all wrong and threaten to do more harm than good. Please, put down the placards and start the long difficult job of learning to think like free people. Next time, you might actually have a chance to get it right. And we can’t afford to squander too many chances.
