Posted on 06/12/2015 11:04:44 AM PDT by jfd1776
In America, when friends learn that a woman is being abused by her husband or boyfriend, what do they do?
They stage an intervention, help her find a lawyer, get a restraining order, get her out of there… as fast as possible.
When a son or daughter learns that an elderly parent is receiving bad care at a nursing home, what do they do?
Pack up Dad’s or Mom’s stuff, help them move to a better, safer place, file a complaint with the state’s attorney or the board of health, press charges, but first and foremost, get them out of there… as fast as possible.
In all sorts of interpersonal relationships, modern American society calls for the abused party to get out of the abusive relationship. America knows that no good comes of standing still and taking a beating, day after day. Get out while you still can!
But switch to the business world, and suddenly the instinctive American desire to help the abused party get to freedom shuts down.
When the big city corporate headquarters sees its property tax jump, year after year, so it has to flee to the suburbs, the local newspaper of record attacks the company for abandoning the city that welcomed it, the city that made it famous (as if it wasn’t the other way around, often as not). “How Dare You Leave?”
When the northern state factory owner sees his state income tax skyrocket, and his business license fees get hiked up, again and again, and then his workmen’s comp and unemployment rates skyrocket, and his insurance premiums jump too because of the break-ins and vandalism at his site, so he finally realizes he simply has to move to a southern state to survive, the unions attack, picket, and sue. “How Dare You Leave?”
When the EPA, OSHA, and DoE promulgate crippling regulations, more and more every year, so that an American manufacturing plant must choose between moving production overseas and going out of business, the politicians erupt, in press conferences and legislative hearings. You traitors! You villains! “How Dare You Leave?”
*
This nation was once a laissez-faire land of opportunity. Government built roads, guarded against monopolies, managed a fair and honorable legal system… and otherwise stayed out of the way. This limited-government approach gave us the massive growth of the nineteenth century, an age in which the poor could become middle class, the middle class could become wealthy, and the rags-to-riches story of entrepreneurial success became not only possible, but widespread.
Over the twentieth century, however, the government grew and grew, becoming the pugilist in the ring who heeds no ref, and attends no bell, but keeps punching until his opponent is on the floor. There is no regulation in place today that they can’t make more complicated tomorrow. There is no tax that they can’t find some justification for increasing next year.
It’s for the children, after all. Or for infrastructure, or for education, or for “the poor.” The business community is always there to be squeezed a little harder. They’ve taken it this long; there’s no reason to stop beating them up now. And no matter what, they have to take it; we won’t let them leave.
It’s almost gotten comical – or would be, if we could find a way to laugh through the tears. A rural pizzeria that’s never encountered a gay couple is targeted by a slimy reporter for honestly answering a hypothetical question. A mom-and-pop bakery is bankrupted over the same hypothetical. There are plenty of other shops that would be happy to fulfill the contract, if it were really offered; they don’t need this particular shop. But that no longer matters; choice has been removed from the equation. Government and the press can sue, and libel, and slander any business with impunity, and the business isn’t allowed to fight back; it isn’t even allowed to run away.
Isn’t this a free country with right-to-contract? Shouldn’t every transaction be between a willing buyer and a willing seller? Isn’t that what America is all about?
It was, once upon a time.
*
For our system to work, the business must be free to contract freely with customers and vendors. But the world of special interests and rabble-rousers – the race-baiters and class action lawyers who run the federal government and the popular culture today – no longer feel constrained by America’s past approach. They can attack and attack, picking their victims at will, trumping up charges in the press, issuing proclamations and demanding red tape, knowing that the business doesn’t dare fight back, and if it even whispers that it might be driven out, it will be attacked for even thinking about it, for “leaving the community without” a local grocery store or convenience store or shoe store.
Why?
Why do we no longer take the side – automatically – of the mom-and-pop shop, the private craftsman, the small caterer or restaurant? Once upon a time, America did. A generation or two ago, America would have stood with that bakery or pizzeria, without a second thought, and would have stampeded the bullying reporter or bureaucrat out of town for picking on the kind of “little guy” who built America. But not today. There might still be a crowd-funding push to raise money for his legal defense – that’s something – but they don’t respond by rising up to attack the bully anymore.
And for all the changes in our society over the last few years, this one has gone unnoticed.
There are many double-standards in American politics:
A panel of Democrat reporters must moderate each Republican debate, but nobody would ever think of appointing a panel of National Review and Human Events reporters to moderate the Democrat debates. A mother must be able to abort her innocent child, but the state isn’t allowed to put a convicted criminal to death. Minority politicians have the right to use the most vulgar and disrespectful language imaginable when attacking conservatives, but let conservatives so much as object and they are shut down for disrespecting the minority.
Oh yes, double-standards abound.
These famous double-standards are known and acknowledged. Even their practitioners smirk as they violate every rule of logic and debate to engage in them. It’s their game, and they revel in it.
But the double-standard of the abused party is different. An abused individual may be supported, championed even, but an abused corporation gets no such automatic defense from the American public. The corporation is left high and dry, swinging over the public discourse like a piñata ready for the next swing of the bat. Far too many Americans haven’t even noticed this particular injustice.
Calvin Coolidge famously – and rightly – said that “the Business of America is Business.”
Oh, would that this were still true.
Copyright 2015 John F. Di Leo
John F. Di Leo is a Chicago-based Customs broker and international trade compliance trainer.
Permission is hereby granted to forward freely, provided it is uncut and the IR URL and byline are included. Follow John F. Di Leo on Facebook or LinkedIn, or on Twitter at @johnfdileo, or on his own site at JohnFDiLeo.com.
The free market has been replaced with corporate welfare where the richest companies can afford to buy legislation that exempts them from regulations that choke smaller businesses out.
If it weren’t for double standards, the left wouldn’t have any standards at all.
Remember the slogan, The Beer that made Milwaukee Famous”?
This phrase struck me. In our government-controlled, complex, pass-the-buck, highly regulated medical system, particularly for elderly - this is an impossibility. I have just been through it with my mother. Private elderly/rehab is super-expensive, and the owners want pre-payment or a complete audit of finances BEFORE they allow a patient in. Anywhere Medicare is going to pay part of the cost - then you need referrals, insurance approval, and recommendations from social workers. There is less and less "choice." We have created a highly regulated, bureaucratic system, and there isn't a black-market for elderly care that I'm aware of - so why is the author surprised when people's only option is to call a lawyer?
bkmk
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