Pro-Business

Businessman: What this country needs is a pro-business government! One that really looks out for the interests of the business community!

Brian: What kinds of things would you want the government to do to help the business community?

Businessman: Lots of things! They should stop over-regulating and over-taxing businesses. And they should adopt policies that will help domestic businesses to thrive and be competitive internationally.

Brian: I definitely agree with you about the taxes and regulations, but could you please be a bit more specific about the kinds of policies you would like to see besides that?

Businessman: More specific? Well, the government should form a partnership with its domestic businesses to promote the growth and development of those businesses.

Brian: What specifically should the government do to promote business growth and development, besides lay off a bit on the taxes and regulations?

Businessman: Well, it should partner with industry to develop marketable innovations.

Brian: It should subsidize certain businesses’ R&D spending?

Businessman: You can call it that if you like… And, it should ensure that our businesses are able to compete on a level-playing field with international companies.

Brian: It should put up tariff barriers to make it more difficult for low-cost international companies to compete on the domestic market?

Businessman: That might be one policy tool used… It should ensure that sufficient liquidity is always available in the financial system to prevent credit crunches.

Brian: It should be ready to run the monetary printing presses at full speed in order to bail out improvident firms when the market experiences a downturn?

Businessman: I’m not sure if that’s how I would describe it… The government should help maintain the good name of our industries by requiring new businesses to demonstrate a minimum level of professionalism and product quality before offering their wares on the market.

Brian: The government should use arbitrary licensing requirements to help the established businesses in an industry form an exclusive cartel to exclude small, innovative businesses from the industry, businesses that could have threatened the market share of the big players?

Businessman: I must object! You have been constantly distorting what I have been saying and putting words in my mouth!

Brian: Apologies if it seems that way, but that was not my intent. I merely wished to clarify the actual policies that the government would adopt in order to adhere to the general, and somewhat vague, guidelines that you suggested. If you would suggest specific policies instead of general guidelines than I would not need to do any interpretation.

Businessman: Well, I’m not a public policy expert, so I can’t do that. I can only offer general directions.

Brian: Ok. Then allow me to ask you a direct, but general, question: would you be satisfied if the government strictly limited itself to protecting the persons and properties of every member of society, including businesses?

Businessman: No, I would not. As I said, government also has a positive role to play in the successful development of our domestic industries.

Brian: Ok. But then you should recognize that whenever the government intervenes in order to favour a business, it generally also results in harm to another group in society, often the consumers, taxpayers, or smaller business competitors. There are two sides of most interventions. Are you comfortable with this?

Businessman: Well, I trust that the folks in government are capable of making these kinds of tough decisions, choosing to intervene only when the balance of advantages is in favour of the national interest as a whole.

Brian: If we have a given intervention that will clearly result in advantages to certain business interests and disadvantages to certain consumer interests, how exactly are we to go about determining whether this is in the ‘national interest’ or not?

Businessman: I’m no expert, but I would imagine that the intervention would be in the national interest if it led to an increase in the economic power of the nation.

Brian: But the consumers, who are also part of the nation, are losing economic power, while the businesses are gaining economic power as a result of the intervention. How do we know what happened to the economic power of the nation?

Businessman: Well, a nation with internationally competitive businesses in many important industries obviously has more clout on the world stage than a nation that doesn’t, and hence it has more economic power.

Brian: It’s true that the government of a country with these things has more power than the government of a country without them, because a threat to cut off trading relations by the former would be much more potent than the same threat by the latter. So an increase in economic power for a nation is analogous to an increase in the international political power of that country’s government? And that’s the goal that policy should be aiming at?

Businessman: Yes, I suppose that’s right.

Brian: I suspect that this kind of policy orientation will be systematically biased in favour of the interests of government officials and of big, established businesses. Ordinary consumers, general taxpayers, and smaller businesses will be routinely disadvantaged by such policies.

Businessman: Well, you can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs.

Brian: And if I’m an egg, I do not want the omelette to be made at all. Thank you for making your position clear.

Businessman: Have I? What a bizarre discussion…