“Because calling business “big” when the conflict is between private competition and centralized direction by the freaking federal government is just plain ridiculous.”
There is no conflict when centralized direction works for the profit of large private industries.
They currently own the government, not the other way around.
“There is no conflict when centralized direction works for the profit of large private industries.”
There is conflict on the part of free market ideologists and statists, if not large private industries (who, by the way, are definitely not motivated by any such thing as “ideas”). Centralized direction always benefits someone, just not what we usually refer to as The Economy, which is what I’m interested in.
“They currently own the government, not the other way around”
Which is impossible to demonstrate, and which I don’t at all believe, but there’s not enough time to deal with it here, but suffice it to say that there’s no lack of preexisting culture to back government largess and no lack of people continuing to propagate socialistic ideas, that we’d hardly need big business to own the government to get exactly the sort of corporatist system that we have. Moreover, there are enough voters earning a living off the federal government unassociated with big business that we could just as easily argue they own the government.