You’ve read Roy Cordato’s description that President Obama isn’t anti-business, he’s anti-free market.
To find more evidence backing Roy’s assertion, try reading Timothy Carney‘s chapter in the new book Back On The Road To Serfdom, edited by Thomas Woods and inspired by the classic 1944 tract from F.A. Hayek.
Carney debunks the myth popular among left-of-center partisans that free markets simply allow big business owners to run amok:
Despite the widespread assumption that a free market is the ideal economy for big business, and that regulation checks the power of big business, more often the opposite is true. Regulation, by adding to the cost of doing business, disproportionately hurts smaller business and acts as a barrier to entry, keeping out new competitors. Likewise, government subsidies can be far more valuable, or at least more reliable, than income from consumers, for which businesses must continually fight with competitors. The dynamics of the lobbying game are crucial here. Bigger companies enjoy a greater advantage in Washington than they do in the market. Not only can bigger companies hire the better lobbyists ? former lawmakers or top administration aides ? and hand out more in campaign contributions, but they also matter more to lawmakers. The more workers you employ and the more taxes you pay, the more lawmakers care about your well-being, desires, and wishes.
In short, big business has a strong motivation to support big government: profit. To use the terminoloy of economist Joseph Schumpeter, big government enables political entrepreneurs ? those who influence government to grant subsidies or harm competitors through regulation ? to succeed over market entrepreneurs.
Thus we frequently see big business-big government collusion, which goes by many names: rent-seeking, corporatism, corporate socialism, corporate welfare, regulatory robbery, and subsidy-suckling, to name a few. Indeed, throughout our country’s history, some of the greatest enemies of the free market have come from the big-business lobby.
