The alleged problem, according to a recent New York Times editorial, is that politicians are forced to "haul in vast corrupting sums from special interests looking for favors." Proposed solutions range from stricter limits on campaign contributions (the centerpiece of the McCain-Feingold plan), all the way to what the Times calls its "ideal": total government financing of federal elections.
But portraying businessmen as corrupt fat cats seeking to buy political influence merely makes them scapegoats for the real villains: the politicians who seek to exert influence over business.
In today's mixed economy, with its enormous maze of taxes, subsidies and regulations, government holds the power to cripple any private company. What, then, is the meaning of, say, the $70,000 "soft money" contribution to the Republican Party made by a large regional phone company that stood to gain from pending telecommunications legislation? Are donations like this an attempt to subvert the political process--or are they self-defense against a political process that is already corrupted by virtue of government's vast power to control the economy?
Why should government be allowed to determine what services telecommunications firms can offer, or what markets they can enter? In a free, capitalist society, such matters should be decided by the uncoerced choices of buyers and sellers. But if the government dictates such decisions, how are private companies supposed to survive except by courting the favor of politicians?
Politicians supposedly exercise their power in the name of the "public interest." But this is a non-objective, undefinable term. There is no entity labeled "the public"; there is just a collection of individuals, with varying goals and values. Thus, the standard of the "public interest" invites a perpetual war to determine which ones are allowed to present themselves as the embodiment of "the public"--and which ones are deemed outside "the public" and inimical to its interest.
Are the owners of the local phone companies "the public"? Or does that title belong to the owners of the long-distance companies? How about cable users? Or Internet users? Or the poor and the phoneless? Since there is no rational means of making such determinations, they will be made on the arbitrary basis of favoring those who have made campaign contributions. Is this bribery--or the product of extortion?
The problem is not that corporations are allowed to give money to political parties, nor even that some businesses will seek to use these donations to buy special, government-granted privileges. The problem is that the businessman's existence hinges on the whims of the politicians, so that even the most honest of businessmen are forced to curry political favors in an attempt to buy back their freedom. This problem would disappear under a system in which government has no power to interfere in the economy.
The proposed reforms, however, blame the victims. And instead of reducing government's power, they actually increase it. The watered-down version of the McCain-Feingold bill would impose $1,000-per-donor limits on donations to political parties. The bill's stronger version would ban advertisements for or against candidates by non-profit "advocacy groups." Bill Bradley has gone even further, pointing out that "money in politics is a little bit like ants in your kitchen; you have to block all the holes or some of them are going to find a way in." Thus, Bradley wants restrictions even on "issue ads" which aim, not even to promote particular candidates, but to champion certain political ideas.
This ominous threat to free speech is the logical result of the reformers' inverted priorities. Private political advocacy by businessmen is portrayed as a threat to the integrity of politicians--so these private voices must be silenced. But, in this bizarre view, no threat is posed by allowing politicians to dispense taxpayers' funds to finance their own campaigns. Thus, as the solution to a problem caused by a government empowered to restrict individual freedom and to dispense favors at will, the reformers propose even further expansion of that power.
The only real solution to the alleged corruption of politics by money is not to punish and disenfranchise the money-makers. The solution is to limit the power of the politicians, by returning to a system of laissez-faire capitalism. As one economist puts it, "the only way to get money out of politics is to get politics out of money-making."
Re: Hindsight Is Always 20/20
Member #: 163
Registered: 1996-2001
Posted:
678
Name:
Doug Cohen
Name:
Doug Cohen
Company:
Self
Occupation:
Constr/splicing/sweep/you name it.
Location:
New England
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