Indispensable Economics It’s Beyond Economics Now

Apr 3, 2009

This past week, President Obama forced the CEO of General Motors to resign. The real significance of this may be lost on most people. Some might say, "Well, if General Motors is not doing well, the CEO should be replaced." The major difficulty with this is that this is a special power of the GM Board of Directors, not the President of the United States. Effectively, this makes President Obama the Board of Directors of General Motors, and any other company he wants to control, and makes the Board a mere figurehead. Slowly but surely, this is moving us to a fascist form of government. In fascism, the companies still exist, but the government tells them what to do. This was similar to Mercantilism, which was the predominant economic system in Europe from about the 1600s until 1800, more or less. Mercantilism was the system of economics that Adam Smith wrote against in his famous An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, which most people shorten to the cryptic Wealth of Nations. Smith was trying to show that government control of business impoverishes nations. Instead, he posited "a system of natural liberty," which allowed people to follow their natural pursuits, take on the risk of doing so, and allow the market, that is, the countless decisions of people, to decide the outcome. It was the realization of the truth that Smith expressed in his work that subsequently brought prosperity to countless nations.

Now we are returning to the old system, under a new guise. Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner recently asked Congress to grant him unprecedented power to shut down any company that, in his opinion, is dangerous to the overall economy. Note that there are no specifics to this power—it would be at his discretion. For those who have read my blog entries "The Economics of Politics," you can see that all of this is a grab for what politicians live for—power, and power alone. Politics attracts those kinds of people. When asked by a Congresswoman where in the Constitution he went to get justification for this type of power, Geithner expressed incoherent babbling. It did not seem ever to cross his mind that he needed Constitutional justification for such an assumption of power. Again, this is typical of fascism. A crisis is, if not created, then hyped, panic flamed up, and people in this panic are willing to trade their freedom for security. Only too late will they realize that the situation was not as bad as the self-interested government officials portrayed it. The power will have been granted, and only a miracle will pry it away from the hands of the government. Once taken, government almost always keeps a power.

Getting back to General Motors, its problems go all the way back to government-imposed protective tariffs, which are a remnant of Mercantilism. Corporations seek to be protected from foreign competition so they do not have to work to keep up. The government, bowing to pressure and false economic theories, puts tariffs and quotas on imports to raise their prices higher than those of the domestic product; in this case, cars. The car makers then can do whatever they want because consumers face a choice of either us or nothing. In the 1970s, when we began allowing imports, the American car companies were caught, and almost went out of business. They finally got their act together when a new wave of government regulation on cars was imposed, thus raising the cost of domestic cars. To boot, the latest situation is that the Federal government is dictating to the car companies what types of cars to make, all in an effort to be "green." The problem is that the market does not want these cars, so the company is forced to spend millions on cars they cannot sell. Then the government says, "Oh, it would be terrible if the companies failed; so many would be put out of work. So we have to bail them out again, and since we are ponying up the money, we now have a controlling interest in them, we can call the shots, we can tell the company what to produce, we can fire the executives, and when the company comes in with a loss, we blame the company again, bail them out again . . . ." And the circle continues. Remember, this government is the same one that has brought us the Post Office, the Department of Motor Vehicles and the public school system. All those who believe that the government can bring us out of a recession should remember that it was the government that caused it in the first place. Remember the housing bubble?

What a racket!

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