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John Taylor, President of the
Virginia Institute for Public Policy, publisher of
Virginia Viewpoint.
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In
the past year, 16 business associations formed an
alliance called the Coalition for Virginia’s
Future. Among the groups represented in this
Coalition are the Virginia Chamber of Commerce, the
Virginia Manufacturers Association, the Virginia
Business Higher Education Council, the Northern
Virginia Technology Council, and several local
Chambers of Commerce. (Information on the Coalition
appears at http://www.vachamber.com.)
The
mission of this Coalition is to work with Governor
Mark R. Warner and the General Assembly to promote
what Coalition members think are desirable policies
for transportation, education, public safety, and
taxation. Taxation falls within the purview of the
Coalition because promotion of the Coalition’s
mission will cost a lot of money. Transportation
alone is cited as calling for “tens of billions of
dollars worth of improvements.”
There
is, of course, nothing wrong with people of all
sorts contributing to the public debate. Doing so is
central to democratic governance.
Nevertheless, analysis exists that supports
policy positions almost the opposite of those the
Coalition endorses. For instance, the big government
answer to transportation challenges is more roads
and increased subsidies for public transit. Yet
there is research that supports the superiority of
alternatives such as pricing schemes for highways,
which reduce congestion by distributing traffic more
evenly throughout the day. This approach, however,
would involve less government, not more. That
represents a problem for the Coalition. Undoubtedly,
much of the increased government spending being
promoted by the Coalition for Virginia
’s
Future would eventually flow through the various
business enterprises that compose the Coalition.
Smaller government and reduced public sector
spending, therefore, are not likely to be on its
agenda.
It
is not unusual for companies, particularly
politically powerful and well-connected large
corporations, to seek ways of transferring their
cost of doing business to others. The thousands of
lobbyists in state capitals and in Washington,
D.C.
are oftentimes employed by companies that have
become more adept at seeking government handouts
than at satisfying consumer demand. The particular
form of corporate welfare can vary from public
assistance to pay for infrastructure, to off-loading
the expense of employee training. Of course, these
are costs of doing business, and should not be
obligations imposed upon individual taxpayers who
cannot defend themselves by mounting a lobbying
campaign comparable to that of a large corporation,
a trade association, or a coalition of trade
associations.
What
is particularly interesting about the Coalition for
Virginia’s
Future is not its standard liberal policy positions,
but what its very formation says about contending
theories of democratic governance. It is common to
address the relationship between government and
business from a populist framework. People are
supposed to participate equally in their governance,
and government protects against the dominance of
large business.
A
cooperative alliance between business and government
most certainly does not fit the populist model of
democracy. It does, however, fit the oligarchic
model. This model asserts that in democratic
governance, the well-organized few necessarily and
inevitably dominate the unorganized or
poorly-organized many.
The
mythology of democratic equality clashes with the
reality of democratic oligarchy. The nature of this
clash resides in nothing more complicated than the
arithmetic of time. How can Virginians participate
equally in deliberations on matters of public
interest? They can’t. What would be required to
give each Virginian a say on some public issue?
There are roughly 4,800,000 Virginians of voting
age. To give each of them just one minute to be
heard would require 80,000 hours. This is 40 years
of full-time work.
We
might simplify the problem by selecting 120 people
at random, a number slightly less than the
membership of the General Assembly, and let these
people do the deliberating. To be sure, this is not
equal participation for all, but selected
participation for a few. If we now give each person
20 minutes to be heard on some particular issue, it
will take 40 hours to hear everyone. And this is but
one issue among many that is on the public agenda.
Moreover, it is one thing to speak, but it is quite
another thing to be heard. People are busy living
their lives, which intensifies the impossibility of
anything approaching equal access to the public
agenda.
In
reality, access for some must come at the expense of
access for others. Those who succeed in the
competition for access will be well-organized
interest groups. Oligarchic rule is a way of life, regardless
of the form of government.
In
democratic oligarchy, there is a relationship of
mutuality among politicians and large businesses.
The centralization of information in large
corporations clearly eases the collection of taxes
and the enforcement of regulations. Large companies
are handmaidens of large government, and the
Coalition for Virginia’s
Future is making a play to expand its influence in
this process of democratic oligarchy.
--
August 5, 2002
Richard E. Wagner is
Holbert L. Harris Professor of Economics at George
Mason University, and a member of the Board of
Scholars of the Virginia Institute for Public
Policy, an education and research organization
headquartered in Potomac Falls, Virginia.
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