Crunchy Cons Might be the Ones to Reign in Big Business
By Alan Stewart Carl | Related entries in Corporate Business, General PoliticsConservative writer Rod Dreher is starting to get noticed for his new book entitled Crunchy Cons. The book focuses on traditional Republican types who are interested in environmental conservation, supporters of smart growth ideals and wary of if not openly hostile towards multi-national corporations. The group is also quite family-centric and traditionally religious.
In many ways, Crunchy Cons sound like David Brook’s Bobos, only with a more overt party affiliation. Of course there are going to be conservatives who shop at Whole Foods, live in more urbanized areas and donate to the Nature Conservancy. The real question is, do the Crunchy Cons represent a significant shift within the Republican Party or are they just a previously unexamined subgroup?
Obviously that’s not a question I can answer, but one aspect of the Crunchy Cons does fascinate me more than the others: their distrust of large corporations. I’ve always found it odd that Republicans can be so mistrustful of big government and yet so blasé about big business. Any large organization runs the risk of abusing its power and causing suffering. But too often Republicans seem to think big business has only the purest of motivations.
Big businesses are amoral and the biggest of them can very easily cause more harm than good. For example, who exactly benefits by AT&T taking over BellSouth and firing 10,000 employees? And don’t tell me “the shareholders.� While stock ownership is a vital part of an open and robust economy, there is more to a healthy society than buoyant stock prices. Is the slight up-tick in our mutual funds worth 10,000 people’s jobs? Does stock ownership carry with it anywhere near the dignity and societal benefit that comes with having a job?
If Crunchy Cons really are a force to be reckoned with, it will be because they do not like what they see in the facelessness and amorality of multi-national corporations. We have not yet come to a crisis point where the excesses of big business are causing irreconcilable harm to our free markets and way of life. But given our blind reverence for these monstrously large companies, we could be headed down that path.
We can be very pro-capitalism and still constrain the excesses of these big businesses. But we have to start with an understanding that the problem exists and that it will likely take regulations and taxes to reign in large corporations who’ve become a burden on society and a roadblock to free market progress. Crunchy Cons could be the ones to lead the way if they can wean the Republican Party away from its current love affair with multi-nationals. What they do then, I don’t know. But just having a Republican Party that is cognizant of the problem would be a step in the right direction.
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March 6th, 2006 at 4:34 pm
Given the character of the term ‘conservative’, one would expect that ‘conservation’ would be a principal component. It is at least consistent. One could even cite traditional Western religious grounds for a robust stance favoring environmental preservation. What is strange is that ‘crunchy conservatives’ have not been more vocal. Perhaps this was because they did not want to risk being associated with radical revolutionary environmentalists?
March 6th, 2006 at 4:35 pm
Just what we need. Another label.
March 7th, 2006 at 2:51 pm
“For example, who exactly benefits by AT&T taking over BellSouth and firing 10,000 employees? And don’t tell me “the shareholders.â€Â? While stock ownership is a vital part of an open and robust economy, there is more to a healthy society than buoyant stock prices.”
In the long run, the economy as a whole. The British have a word for layoffs - redundancy. The people being laid off, typically, are no longer adding as much to the company as they’re recieving in benefits. That makes them a productivity sink. So they get laid off, and they generally find another job where there was a need for more workers.
And yes, it sucks. I’ve been there. But I’m a hell of a lot more productive at my new job.
March 8th, 2006 at 3:01 pm
As Tom says, the economy as a whole benefits if there’s a task we can accomplish with 10,000 fewer workers; those workers can move on to something else that needs doing.
The dark side of the AT&T/BellSouth merger is of a different type, namely the increased leverage the new corporation has to reshape the Internet for the worse - a goal they are very open about.
March 20th, 2006 at 10:38 am
Sounds like the end justifies the means. Seems to me that the communists acted that way. If it helped them realize their utopia on earth, then all manner of suffering could be justified, because it would be better in the end. But for who? Not those 10,000. Even though some might be better off someday, incalculable suffering will be the lot of most-bankruptcy, broken marriages, illness…My point is any system that uses this type of logic is in trouble, because it’s sowing seeds of tremendous difficulties in the future.