From Ross Douthat, and Jonah Goldberg, which is on full display in the health-care debacle, with the weird and awkward bear hug between Washington and the insurance companies:
If you want to know why business takes such an interest in Washington, the answer can be found in your low-flow toilet, in the warning labels adorning your cars, in your 8 zillion page tax returns. It can be found while you wait on hold trying to get a human to answer your questions about your health insurance. And the answer is most certainly somewhere in your box of cereal, made with grains subsidized by Uncle Sam and coated in sugar that has no business being grown in the United States of America. Corporations meddle in Washington because Washington meddles with them.
It is simply naive to believe that a businessman will have no interest in politics when politicians have taken a great interest in him. And it is grotesquely unfair to assume that businesspeople are corrupt simply because they want to support politicians less inclined to hurt them.
Yes, Bill Gates learned that lesson the hard way.
Yes, Bill Gates is like the American Jew. Nothing is better than kissing the liberal hand that beats you.
I read Salon.com mostly to see what the big-gov’t folks are up to (it’s much easier to take than HuffPo or Kos), plus they have good movie reviews, plus the usually enjoyable Ask the Pilot column. However, Glenn Greenwald, who I seldom agree with, has a pretty decent column on corporatism today: http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2009/12/18/corporatism . I think he makes several points in general agreement with the article you linked. Worth checking out.
One real problem — perhaps our biggest problem — is too much trust in authority — even when we agree with it.
I know I get things wrong — even in areas in which I am rather knowledgeable. Right now, for example, I am trying to install Google Chrome on my Linux system. It should be easy. Yeah, right. It isn’t — and I haven’t discovered the problem.
That’s just one reason free democratic systems work better than authoritarian systems — at least in most circumstances.
It would be just as alarming if, having come to Congress hat in hand, the General Motors had not submitted to extra public involvement. It’s one thing for the government to ask my still-liquid company to put me out and another for a major debt-holder to expect some influence. Even if the debt-holder is government. Especially when that debt-holder has more scrip than the shareholders have equity.