Which Came First–The Government Chicken or the Corporate Egg?

During the past week, we’ve been discussing Sohrab Ahmari’s new book Tyranny, Inc. We can summarize Ahmari’s book in five short sentences. 

Politicians implemented policy and programs to free up the economy. This would produce, they argued, greater prosperity. What happened was the exact opposite. Corporate power began to dominate the economy and destroyed the middle class. Freedom means nothing when you’re precarious and need three jobs to pay the bills.

Five more sentences open the hood and show us the inner workings of the economic engine.

Behind closed doors, corporate titans knew what they were delivering to everyday folk wasn’t good. They did it anyway because they knew they’d be in charge of the economy. Running the economy had to be prosperous for corporations, they thought. Once the state abdicates its role in the economy, what do we have? The author, a responsible conservative, calls it “private tyranny.”

Tyranny, Inc. or private tyranny, is the heart of Ahmadi’s argument.

What’s the difference between private tyranny and public tyranny? For the first half of US history, the only tyrant was “big government.” That’s because corporations were much weaker than they are today. Today, our economy is vastly more corporatized. Today’s tyrant, argues the author, usually has Inc., Ltd., or LLC after its name.

Private tyrannies, argues Ahmari, demand public remedies. The second half of Ahmari’s book is about solutions. We submit that the Cochise County groundwater campaign is one such public remedy.

Tyranny, Inc. blames corporations for government failures. It turns the usual trope of bumbling, incompetent government (which we all want to avoid) on its head. Today we see corporations capturing the very government agencies charged with overseeing them. Fraud, waste, and abuse are rampant–and under-prosecuted. At the level of retail politics, we see something similar. Most politicians are for sale to the highest bidder. That bidder is rarely the electorate (voters).

Sohrab Ahmari is Iranian-American, like some of Cochise County’s small- and medium-producers. We’re trying to bring him to Cochise County to meet the victims of our groundwater wars. No doubt he’d call it a form of corporate tyranny, private tyranny, or Tyranny, Inc.

Get this book and read it. Every person in Cochise County concerned about groundwater should be talking it up. Discuss it with your friends.