There’s a common misconception that businesses support Republicans and oppose Democrats because Democrats want the government to interfere with the free market, and businesses just want the government to leave them alone. Reality is exactly the opposite.
When I first moved to Washington I thought the same thing, then I worked in and around it. The dirty little secret is most businesses love government interfering with their industries. It seems counterintuitive, but it’s true. A large percentage of the regulations that govern most industries are written, at least in part, not to protect consumers but to protect those businesses from new competition. They aren’t as much guardrails as they are barriers to entry.
Large companies are more than happy to comply with regulations they helped put in place because they can afford it and know how to navigate them, or were grandfathered in. New companies can’t. They’re either forced to choose between restricting their size to avoid the need to comply or to risk bankruptcy giving it a shot.
The people running those companies, often times, view the government as a partner and regulations as weapons against their competition. They’re big government liberals who only cry “but the free market!” temporarily, on the rare occasions when they are in the crosshairs. I’ve seen it firsthand, been in the meetings with their lobbyists, who are more than happy to sick the government on their competition, plead for mercy and extol the virtues of the free market when the monster they’ve weaponized turns on them.
That’s why big corporations and the incredibly wealthy people who run them give so much money to Democratic candidates and liberal organizations – they are liberals.
So when the news broke this week that Citibank, one of the largest banks in the world, decided to impose on companies that sell guns and bank at Citi new rules that would force them to comply with the bank’s wishes on gun control or they’d block their ability to conduct a lawful business, I was disgusted, but not surprised.
Just like big government, big business thinks there are no bounds to their power. After all, both write the rules by which they’re governed, so who’s going to hold them to account? Customers might, but the outrage they incite usually fades quickly. And many simply don’t care, they’re willing to sacrifice for the cause.
When Dick’s Sporting Goods announced they were implementing their own gun laws, sales plummeted. You’d think that would be a wake-up call, but they didn’t care. They’re willing to forgo sales to support the liberal agenda. It wasn’t a surprise that elitist, beta-males weren’t their customers in the first place, and people who enjoy camping, fishing, and hunting might have a problem with a company trying to diminish their Second Amendment rights and take their business elsewhere. Dick’s either chose to placate the liberal mob or join them over their customers and are paying the price.
Citibank is no different. They’ll lose customers in the short-term, but they will be on the “right side of history” in the eyes of that liberal mob and their upper-income bracket brethren, so it’s worth it to them. Plus, they’re true believers.
Just like Facebook’s leadership are true believers.
Facebook is manipulating the news you see on their site to exclude conservative sites, YouTube is actively harming conservatives by denying them ad revenue and banning pro-Second Amendment videos. Twitter shadow-bans conservatives, and Google manipulates search suggestions and results to nudge users toward liberal spin and websites.
They are the only games in town, they are our corporate masters. For all the talk of Bing as a search alternative, its traffic is a drop in the bucket compared to Google, and Google owns YouTube. As for Facebook, MySpace is unlikely to make a comeback…
The thing about liberals is, for all their talk of “democracy,” they really hate the concept. (Yes, we are a republic, but you know what I’m saying, so don’t start.) The idea of people living their lives however they so choose – the freedom to be free – is the pebble in their shoe that annoys them to no end. When given the opportunity, they will always seek control over others, in government or the private sector. Even when not given the opportunity, they will seek to seize it.
They fight for control at the ballot box, but have been on a losing streak of late. Undeterred by losses and uninterested in the reasons for those losses, they circumvent the electoral process and run straight to the courts.
In the corporate world, they captain their own ships, and they simply don’t give a damn. They are trying to control what we can buy, what we can watch, what we can read, how we can spend our own money, what we can say, and how we live our lives. And come this fall, they may well regain their grip on the levers of power in Congress. If that doesn’t scare the hell out of you, nothing will.