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Begin New Search Political Geography America Content Type Journal Article Author Eric Daniels

1. Antitrust with a Vengeance: The Obama Administration's Anti-Business Cudgel

Author:
Eric Daniels
Publication Date:
12-2009
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Objective Standard
Institution:
The Objective Standard
Abstract:
Not yet a year into its term, the initially popular Obama administration has plummeted in popularity. In light of Washington's escalated meddling in the economy, many Americans are expressing deep concerns and anger about the statist direction in which this administration is steering the country. Unfortunately, however, few Americans are aware of-and the media is ignoring-one of the administration's most serious threats to our freedom: its stated intention to bolster antitrust enforcement. Since May, Christine Varney, the newly appointed assistant attorney general for the Justice Department's Antitrust Division, has conducted a speaking tour promoting the Division's new mandate under Obama and affirming the president's many campaign promises to "reinvigorate antitrust enforcement." Varney and her counterpart at the Federal Trade Commission, Jon Leibowitz, are publicly threatening "possible investigations" of businesses ranging from Google to Monsanto to IBM. In response to this new climate, antitrust advocates from Senator Charles Schumer to the American Booksellers Association have called on Varney to undertake new prosecutions. And New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo recently joined the push by filing a suit against Intel.1 Americans should not only be aware of this ominous trend; they should be up in arms about it. Antitrust laws violate the rights of American businessmen and consumers, thwart economic development, and stifle our quality of life in myriad ways. To see why, we must first understand what antitrust law is. During the second half of the 19th century, as American companies grew and acquired assets around the country, they found themselves in a difficult position. Although companies could achieve economies of scale by acquiring smaller firms and unifying their efforts, state laws prevented them from doing so. Whereas some state legislatures imposed special taxes on out-of-state corporations doing business in their states, other legislatures forbade corporations in their state from holding the stock of companies based elsewhere. (Legislators established such restrictions in the hope that they would force successful companies to incorporate-and thus pay taxes-in their state.) In response to these restrictions on acquisitions, C. T. Dodd and John D. Rockefeller of Standard Oil created a new form of business using the device of a legal trust, which enabled them to hold the stock of dozens of companies and thus effectively manage vast productive assets.2 The operational and financial advantages of this novel corporate structure were immense, yet critics alleged that the newly created trusts were "odious monopolies," charging them with "making competition impossible," "raising prices," and "disregarding the interests of the American consumer."3 Critics condemned this new legal device as a "problem" and branded businessmen who employed it as "robber barons." Yet these businessmen used this legal device to create their vast fortunes by increasing competition, lowering prices, and providing American consumers with more and better products.4 The problem was not that their novel form of business had generated economic inefficiencies-it had done the opposite. Rather, the problem was a political one. Because these businesses were becoming fabulously successful and their owners enormously wealthy, egalitarian-minded and envious Americans pressured politicians to "do something," and politicians, seeking approval, got "tough" on the issue. A solution to the trust "problem" came in the form of the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890. Senator John Sherman and his colleagues claimed that trusts were "combinations that affect injuriously the industrial liberty of the citizens of these States."5 Critics of the trusts claimed that their high profits were achieved-not through the entrepreneurial, managerial, and productive genius of men such as Rockefeller, Edison, and Carnegie-but by "the few extorting the many."6 Because of the "public outcry on the trust question" and the alleged need to protect the "interests of the consumer," Sherman and his colleagues advocated the creation of a broad law that outlawed "monopolization" and "restraint of trade." That law was the Sherman Antitrust Act, and since its passage in 1890 Congress has added five other antitrust laws to the books, prohibiting dozens of supposedly "anticompetitive" business practices.7 . . . To read the rest of this article, select one of the following options: Subscriber Login | Subscribe | Renew | Purchase a PDF of this article.
Topic:
Economics and Oil
Political Geography:
America

2. Deeper Than Kelo: The Roots of the Property Rights Crisis

Author:
Eric Daniels
Publication Date:
09-2008
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Objective Standard
Institution:
The Objective Standard
Abstract:
On June 23, 2005, the United States Supreme Court's acquiescence in a municipal government's use of eminent domain to advance "economic development" goals sent shockwaves across the country. When the Court announced its decision in Kelo v. City of New London, average homeowners realized that their houses could be condemned, seized, and handed over to other private parties. They wanted to know what had gone wrong, why the Constitution and Fifth Amendment had failed to protect their property rights. The crux of the decision, and the source of so much indignation, was the majority opinion of Justice John Paul Stevens, which contended that "economic development" was such a "traditional and long accepted function of government" that it fell under the rubric of "public use." If a municipality or state determined, through a "carefully considered" planning process, that taking land from one owner and giving it to another would lead to increased tax revenue, job growth, and the revitalization of depressed urban areas, the Court would allow it. If the government had to condemn private homes to meet "the diverse and always evolving needs of society," Stevens wrote, so be it. The reaction to the Kelo decision was swift and widespread. Surveys showed that 80 to 90 percent of Americans opposed the decision. Politicians from both parties spoke out against it. Such strange bedfellows as Rush Limbaugh and Ralph Nader were united in their opposition to the Court's ruling. Legislatures in more than forty states proposed and most then passed eminent domain "reforms." In the 2006 elections, nearly one dozen states considered anti-Kelo ballot initiatives, and ten such measures passed. On the one-year anniversary of the decision, President Bush issued an executive order that barred federal agencies from using eminent domain to take property for economic development purposes (even though the primary use of eminent domain is by state and local agencies). The "backlash" against the Court's Kelo decision continues today by way of reform efforts in California and other states. Public outcry notwithstanding, the Kelo decision did not represent a substantial worsening of the state of property rights in America. Rather, the Kelo decision reaffirmed decades of precedent-precedent unfortunately rooted in the origins of the American system. Nor is eminent domain the only threat to property rights in America. Even if the federal and state governments abolished eminent domain tomorrow, property rights would still be insecure, because the cause of the problem is more fundamental than law or politics. In order to identify the fundamental cause of the property rights crisis, we must observe how the American legal and political system has treated property rights over the course of the past two centuries and take note of the ideas offered in support of their rulings and regulations. In so doing, we will see that the assault on property rights in America is the result of a long chain of historical precedent moored in widespread acceptance of a particular moral philosophy.Property, Principle, and Precedent In the Revolutionary era, America's Founding Fathers argued that respect for property rights formed the very foundation of good government. For instance, Arthur Lee, a Virginia delegate to the Continental Congress, wrote that "the right of property is the guardian of every other right, and to deprive a people of this, is in fact to deprive them of their liberty." In a 1792 essay on property published in the National Gazette, James Madison expressed the importance of property to the founding generation. "Government is instituted to protect property of every sort," he explained, "this being the end of government, that alone is a just government, which impartially secures to every man, whatever is his own." Despite this prevalent attitude-along with the strong protections for property contained in the United States Constitution's contracts clause, ex post facto clause, and the prohibition of state interference with currency-the founders accepted the idea that the power of eminent domain, the power to forcibly wrest property from private individuals, was a legitimate power of sovereignty resting in all governments. Although the founders held that the "despotic power" of eminent domain should be limited to taking property for "public use," and that the victims of such takings were due "just compensation," their acceptance of its legitimacy was the tip of a wedge. The principle that property rights are inalienable had been violated. If the government can properly take property for "public use," then property rights are not absolute, and the extent to which they can be violated depends on the meaning ascribed to "public use." From the earliest adjudication of eminent domain cases, it became clear that the term "public use" would cause problems. Although the founders intended eminent domain to be used only for public projects such as roads, 19th-century legislatures began using it to transfer property to private parties, such as mill and dam owners or canal and railroad companies, on the grounds that they were open to public use and provided wide public benefits. Add to this the fact that, during the New Deal, the Supreme Court explicitly endorsed the idea that property issues were to be determined not by reference to the principle of individual rights but by legislative majorities, and you have the foundation for all that followed. . . .
Topic:
Development and Economics
Political Geography:
United States, America, and London

3. Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness

Author:
Eric Daniels
Publication Date:
09-2008
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Objective Standard
Institution:
The Objective Standard
Abstract:
One of the distinguishing features of American life is the large degree of freedom we have in making choices about our lives. When choosing our diets, we have the freedom to choose everything from subsisting exclusively on junk food to consuming meticulously planned portions of fat, protein, and carbohydrate. When choosing how to conduct ourselves financially, we have the freedom to choose everything from a highly leveraged lifestyle of debt to a modest save-for-a-rainy-day approach. In every area of life, from health care to education to personal relationships, we are free to make countless decisions that affect our long-term happiness and prosperity-or lack thereof. According to Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein, professors at the University of Chicago and authors of Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness, this freedom and range of options is problematic. The problem, they say, is that most people, when given the opportunity, make bad choices; although Americans naturally want to do what is best for themselves, human fallibility often prevents them from knowing just what that is. "Most of us are busy, our lives are complicated, and we can't spend all our time thinking and analyzing everything" (p. 22). Average Americans, say Thaler and Sunstein, tend to favor the status quo, fall victim to temptation, use mental shortcuts, lack self-control, and follow the herd; as a result, they eat too much junk food, save too little, make bad investments, and buy faddish but useless products. Many Americans, according to the authors, are more like Homer Simpson (impulsive and easily fooled) than homo economicus (cool, calculating, and rational). "One of our major goals in this book," they note, "is to see how the world might be made easier, or safer, for the Homers among us" (p. 22). The particular areas where these Homers need the most help are those in which choices "have delayed effects . . . [are] difficult, infrequent, and offer poor feedback, and those for which the relation between choice and experience is ambiguous" (pp. 77-78).The central theme of Nudge is the idea that government and the private sector can improve people's choices by manipulating the "choice architecture" they face. As Thaler and Sunstein explain, people's choices are often shaped by the way in which alternatives are presented. If a doctor explains to his patient that a proposed medical procedure results in success in 90 percent of cases, that patient will often make a different decision from the one he would have made if the doctor had told him that one in ten patients dies from the procedure. Free markets, the authors argue, too often cater to and exploit people's tendencies to make less than rational choices. Faced with choices about extended warranties or health care plans or investing in one's education, only the most exceptional and rational people will make the "correct" choices. Most people, the authors argue, cannot avoid the common foibles of bad thinking; thus we ought to adopt a better way of framing and structuring choices so that people will be more likely to make better decisions and thereby do better for themselves. Hence the title: By presenting information in a specific way, "choice architects" can "nudge" the chooser in the "right" direction, even while maintaining his "freedom of choice."
Topic:
Health
Political Geography:
America and Chicago

4. New Deal or Raw Deal? How FDR's Economic Legacy Has Damaged America

Author:
Eric Daniels
Publication Date:
12-2008
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Objective Standard
Institution:
The Objective Standard
Abstract:
Seventy-five years have elapsed since Franklin Delano Roosevelt introduced the flurry of government programs he called the New Deal. In the years since, most historians have lavished FDR with praise, claiming that his bold leadership helped to pull America out of the Great Depression. Even those who acknowledge the failure of particular Roosevelt-era programs claim that FDR instilled hope and confidence in the American people, and that his economic failures were the result of his not going far enough in his policies and not spending enough money. Today, amidst calls for increasing government regulation of the financial industry and increasing government spending through stimulus packages, the New Deal is making a comeback. In light of the recent mortgage crisis and economic downturn, pundits are calling for a revival of 1930s-style policies. Daniel Gross claimed at Slate.com that New Deal reforms were "saving capitalism again." Newly minted Nobel economist Paul Krugman issued calls in the New York Times for President-elect Obama to mimic and expand FDR's response to the Great Depression. And a recent Time cover called for a "New New Deal"-and featured an iconic photo of FDR, with Obama's face and hands substituted. As the Obama administration begins to implement its economic plan, Americans would do well to reexamine the history of the original New Deal and its effects. Though most historians rank FDR as a great president, some, including Burton Folsom Jr., boldly dare to ask if "the New Deal, rather than helping to cure the Great Depression, actually help[ed to] prolong it" (p. 7). According to Folsom, a professor of history at Hillsdale College, the answer is clearly the latter. In New Deal or Raw Deal? How FDR's Economic Legacy Has Damaged America, he challenges the myth that FDR's New Deal represents a shining moment in American history. As long as the mythology surrounding the New Deal remains intact, he notes, "the principles of public policy derived from the New Deal will continue to dominate American politics" (p. 15), costing Americans billions of dollars and further damaging the economy. . . .
Topic:
Economics, Government, and History
Political Geography:
America

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