What do you Get When Government Mixes with Business?

by J. Reed Mackley

For Free Government and Business, Keep them Separate!

Government by its nature is a fearful organism since it must be strong enough to control criminal actions and invasion of individual rights by the use of force. Business, in a free society on the other hand, depends on voluntary patronization for its existence. With human nature as it is, government and business are mutually dependent, while having deleterious or even lethal effects on each other when they are not kept within their bounds. The two operate on opposite principles –freedom and force. Business supports the people and government while government protects the business and the people. The conflict of interest makes it dangerous to mix the two because tyranny over the people is the result when Government forces out freedom in business. When the two are mixed, either one or the other will become dominant and take over the purposes and ability of the other. The bottom line is they must be kept separate.

Keeping government out of business, and business out of government is an ongoing struggle. At present we see the invasion of government into business on all levels. Many are concerned about the takeover of the banking system, of the airlines, of the automobile industry, and of the healthcare system on both the national and state levels. However, few people seem to be concerned with the movement by most cities to take over the real estate development business by procedures using EDA’s and RDA’s. In these takeovers, the title to the properties is often transferred to the city. However, there are more invasive government controls on business than by the outright taking of title to the property. Some of these are commodity subsidies, price control, minimum wage, licensing, land use ordinances, etc.

The big misconception that government should keep business from failing flies against the natural law of freedom as well as against the Constitutional requirements of limited government. In fact, much of the failure of business can be traced to government regulations. Decisions are made best when the possibility of failure is as real as the possibility of success. When government takes away the consequences of business decisions, then freedom and incentive to be productive are gone. The free enterprise system has proven to be by far the most productive and peaceful.

The effects of government control of business, and business control of government both work to the bane of the people in general. Look at these examples:

· The state and local government sets up the Utah Transit Authority to establishes a bus and rail system that gets 85% of its income from taxes and only 15 percent from the patrons. This puts the private tax paying bus companies out of business;

· The minimum wage law makes it impossible for a business to hire young untrained persons, and then pays huge amounts to control gangs who are loitering, and huge amounts on technical colleges to teach the untrained how to work;

· The government continues to produce military weapons even after the military leaders say they no longer use that item;

· The government regulations on the financial institutions cause them to fail and then the government pays billions to bail them out;

· Cities pass a multitude of building and development laws that make housing too expensive, and then builds subsidized “affordable” housing at the taxpayers expense;

· Cities burden and control developers to the point where they can not survive;

· The new great movement is to control the price of healthcare by the force of government law rather than by freeing the providers and putting them on the natural law of supply and demand.

The government’s job of controlling crime has now supposedly become that of controlling business. The definition of crime has changed. It was once the invasion of another’s person or property. Now it is doing something good such as building a house or operating a business or giving professional service without a license or permit granted by the city and/or state. There is a great evil starting when government gets into business!

“We strive to promote liberty by encouraging faith in God, promoting family values and by supporting and publicizing principles of the Constitution of the United States of America”