For too long those of us who have stood up for free market capitalism have tended to wonder why it seemd quite lonely. With the exception of a handful of think tanks, the voices in favour of less government and more freedom have been few and far between. Most of the media seems to be inhabited by the "what is the government going to do about it" school of questioning regarding any issue or situation that comes along, precious few ask "when will the government get out of the way".
So it is gratifying that in the UK, at least, two voices have come out in the past day in favour of capitalism and less government.
The first comes from Sir Terry Leahy, former Chief Executive of the largest supermarket chain - Tesco. He is no libertarian and he wasn't advocating stripping back the state like I would, but writing in City AM he said:
"As a believer in the free market, and someone who trusts people, in my eyes taxes are still too high. Insufficient incentives exist in the UK to encourage investment, hard work and job creation. The ambition to steadily cut corporation tax is laudable. This, though, should be part of a much wider programme of tax reduction, which does not imperil plans to cut the deficit or spook the markets, but gives employees, employers and investors more money to do with as they wish."
More of their own money of course.
"what is needed in the UK: a rebirth of capitalism. Business cannot sit idly by and expect politicians to do this alone. If we have the courage of our convictions, business people need to get stuck into the debate, taking this message not just to the media but elsewhere, including schools. Every student should be taught about wealth creation and entrepreneurship."
Quite. Business people have for far too long stood by and let politicians on the left push anti-business and anti-capitalist agendas. The chimera of "corporate social responsibility" has been used to shroud the idea that fundamentally business and capitalism is "bad", and that it needs to compensate society for what it does. Utter nonsense. More recently the idea of "green business" and "triple bottom line accounting", have been spawned by those pandering to the ecological-left, in the hope that it will chase away threats of more taxes and regulation, when all it does is surrender the intellectual argument to them. There is no harm in seeking to be more energy efficient, to gloat about how environmentally friendly you are and the like, but to surrender the intellectual argument that in fact - your business creates wealth, makes people better off, satisfies consumers and employs people - all through voluntary exchange - something government fails to do, is a disaster.
It parallels the businesses who embrace corporatism, who think "government relations" is about seeing what favours can be granted to their sector, whether it be reduced competition, more subsidies, regulation of competitors, taxing of competitors - rather than encouraging government to get out of the way, except when it is about protecting property rights and contract enforcement.
For Leahy to say this is welcome, but the other promoter of capitalism is more bewildering, although one might hope encouraging.
It's the Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne. He said businesses need to fight back against anti-business sentiment that "dominates current political discourse". He was quoted by City AM saying "If you are not out there, engaged in those arguments, then you are going to leave the field open to those people who want to fill that space, and who argue that companies... have got to pay more tax". He wants businesses to retaliate against "the politics that says it's perfectly acceptable for the state to take half of all national income".
Naturally I agree, but isn't this his job too?
Shouldn't he be arguing in favour of not just simplifying planning law, but by scrapping it in favour of private property rights?
Shouldn't he be actively cutting all areas of state spending, not ringfencing the Soviet style NHS with half-hearted reforms that incentivise more contracting out, not ringfencing aid to developing countries?
Shouldn't he be abandoning the "Green Investment Bank" boondoggle, not waste money on an unprofitable (and uneconomic) high speed railway, abandon green taxes on electricity generation and be winding back and abolishing the legion of regulators for so many sectors?
Shouldn't he be leading the charge against the ban on new airport runway construction by the private companies that own London's three biggest airports?
In other words, shouldn't he be the government's chief advocate of capitalism, less government and freer markets (let the Liberal Democrats argue the contrary)?
The morality and the empirical evidence of what capitalism has enabled should be getting shouted from the rooftops, especially when the UK media is dominated not by Rupert Murdoch and News Corp, but the state owned BBC - itself almost entirely funded by the forcible extracted extortion system known as the TV licence.
