Trust and anti-trust

By Jim Thompson
HCP columnist

I think we all agree there is a partisan divide in this country the likes of which we have not previously experienced, at least in the lifetimes of most of the living.

We most likely do not agree on the genesis of this partisanship. Let me suggest another way of looking at it.

The way I often view it is this: Who do you trust more: Government or business?

Personally, I tend to trust business more, if for no other reason than all the rules and regulations that government puts on business. Oh, there will be many who will say the regulation load is light.

However, do you know, for example, that the top executive on a manufacturing site can go to jail if they do not comply with environmental laws? Do know that the same executive can be held criminally accountable for manslaughter due to the death of an employee?

There are regulations that bother me greatly. These are the anti-trust laws. Why, when an entrepreneur takes a risk to develop a product and market out of thin air, do we as a people, represented by the government, think it is OK to take that company apart because it got too big?

What is too big?

Theodore Roosevelt started us down this silly and unfair path, going after, most notably, Standard Oil. Down through the years, many others have been attacked by the same ferocious attitude and zillions of dollars have been spent defending, sometimes unsuccessfully, against this egregious behavior by the government. What good does it do?

What is the real motive? I contend the real motive is simply jealousy at success. However, let me stop this argument and concede it for a moment. If anti-trust laws apply to business, I have a couple of other places where they equally should be applied. Unions would be one of these.

Today, this would apply mainly to unions organizing government employees. Yet, the place where I most want to apply anti-trust laws is to the government itself.

The federal government runs Social Security as a monopoly. Obamacare is a monopoly. In the private sector, such conditions would be jumped on in a flash. Highways are a monopoly and so is airport security. I could go on and on.

As far as trusting government more than you do business, if that is your view, I have some prime land in the Everglades I would like to sell you.

The GAO report on the financial controls of the federal government, issued on the 17th of January this year, is a damning rebuke of fiduciary responsibility. Politicians are regularly jailed for financial shenanigans.

And all this is without delving into the ridiculously poor service one receives from government employees. Hey, they are not dumb – they know you have to deal with them. Where else are you going to buy license plates for your car?

I am particularly revolted when politicians talk about being a servant of the people.

Who are they trying to kid? The politician who truly is the servant of the people is rare and never uses those words.

Who do I trust? I'll take business people any day. Business people who have created businesses at great risk from nothing or business people that have to vigorously compete for my services.

Government? Ask an American Indian (or, Native American, if you prefer) how much it should be trusted.

Jim Thompson, formerly of Marshall, is a graduate of Hillsboro High School and the University of Cincinnati. He resides in Duluth, Ga., following decades of wandering the world, and is a columnist for The Highland County Press.