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Obama and the Reawakening of Corporatism
Steven Malanga, Real Clear MarketsIn 1970, General Motors was the largest and most profitable company in America. Today, of course, GM is neither. Instead, in 2009 Americas largest company is Wal-Mart, which was still only a regional, privately-held retailer in 1970. Wal-Marts rapid rise is not unique, however. Among the 100 largest firms today, a numberincluding FedEx, Microsoft, Cisco, and Home Depot--didnt even exist in 1970. So profoundly has the landscape changed that 80 percent of the Fortune 100 companies today are different from 1970. All of this is the result of an entrepreneurial revolution spurred by everything from intensifying international competition starting in the late 1950s, to the lowering of confiscatory tax rates starting in the 1960s, to a series of technological revolutions that gathered momentum in the 1970s, to the taming of inflation in the early 1980s. During that time the corporate team player, the quintessential organizational man, slowly gave way to the dazzling but disruptive entrepreneur whose innovations rapidly reshaped the economyand the ranks of corporate Americaseveral times over. But we are entering quite a different age right now, one in which the President of the United States and his hand-selected industrial overseers fire the chief executive of General Motors and chart the companys next moves in order to preserve it. Conservative critics of the president have said that the governments GM strategy is one of many examples of an America drifting toward socialism. But President Obama is not a socialist. If his agenda harks back to anything, it is to corporatism, the notion that elite groups of individuals molded together into committees or public-private boards can guide society and coordinate the economy from the top town and manage change by evolution, not revolution. . . . Corporatism is especially attractive to politicians, public intellectuals who serve as policy makers, and Nobel Laureates because it is ultimately a world managed by the few, the elect, through the state. If we are told enough times that nothing, even technological innovation, is possible anymore without significant contributions and directions from the state, maybe well eventually come to believe it, although the inventors of the printing press, the steam engine, the light bulb, the telephone, and internal combustion engine and other game-changing technologies might wonder how they accomplished what they did without government. Corporatism is not about regulating capitalism better as markets evolve. It is several steps beyond. It is instead about those who believe in the beauty of pushing a button to solve problems, as the economist Paul Krugman recently described his attraction to the social sciences. Some people worry about what happens when the regulators take charge of our economy. But the real concern is what happens when the button pushers take charge, for the button pushers are the corporatists. Posted by: Mike 2009-04-09 |
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