The American Spectator

I suspect the main losses are in ingenuity, innovation, and entrepreneurship. It’s a cliche, but small businesses hold the most potential for real contributions to this country’s prosperity. Big businesses play great roles, too, in helping drive down costs and employing lots of people. But the key point here is that giving consumers and investors more control over their own money will result in a more efficient allocation of resources.

I’ve always felt that one of the challenges for true champions of civil liberties is that only one half of the country is ever interested in the cause at a given time. Do those who would like to see the big business-big government marriage annulled have a similar problem? Are partisans always going to give their team a pass on these issues as the price of victory? And if so, what is the prognosis for real change?

I think you exaggerate the problem. If you’re talking about politicians, you’re 99 percent right about the lack of principle. If you’re talking about the media, activists, and the public, I think you’re only 50 percent right. But still, high-stakes politics does hurt the cause of limiting government. The chance of changing things for the better? It’s pretty low. I wrote this book and articulated the problem, but you’ll notice I don’t too much prescribing solutions. As a conservative, I am wary of “solutions.”

We can do incremental things to make the situation better. We can start by no longer giving big business a free pass. I personally will start by trying to draw media attention to how much big business profits from regulation. The key is getting this information out there: regulations help big business and hurt little guys. Once that idea is more commonly understood, politicians will be less likely to do big-business’s bidding in calling for big government.