Dan Calabrese

It’s often said that the Democratic Party is anti-business. In a sense, that’s true, but it’s ironic. The Democratic Party may be the biggest and most sophisticated business in America. And it acts like most other businesses.

The other guys.

The objective of a business is to convince as large a market as possible to purchase a product or service, and this is generally done by convincing the people in that market that their lives won’t be as complete without whatever it is you’re offering.

The Democrats offer any number of things that might be categorized as “benefits,” a description that holds insofar as it describes things that purportedly either make your life better or, at the very least, protect you from some sort of catastrophe you couldn’t handle if left to your own devices.

The reason Democrats are anti-business, therefore, is that private-sector businesses compete with government – and thus, with Democrats, the party of government – to provide the goods, services and benefits that make your life better.

Do you need a doctor? Then just go see one. But no, say Democrats. Doctors will rip you off unless we, Democrats, make sure they don’t. Do you need a good income? Then start a business or go work for someone else’s business. But no, say Democrats. The market is unfair, corrupt and rigged against you! You need us to confiscate money from those who have made money so we can give it to you.

Do you want a raise? Then go ask your boss. But no, say Democrats. Your boss is a greedy capitalist pig who will probably fire you for even asking. We’ll get you into a union (trust us, you’ll love it) that will negotiate your wages on your behalf.

A business does everything it can to persuade you that it can meet your needs, and that its competitors cannot.

Since Democrats are only in business to the extent to which they control government, their competitors are everyone in the private sector, as well as anyone who would keep them out of the control of government. That explains why they’re anti-business. It’s a simple matter of competition. If you believe in private business, trust private business or understand private business, you will patronize private business with confidence. If you don’t, you will look to an alternative to meet your needs, and the only alternative is government.

Now, you might wonder, if it’s just a matter of their enterprise vs. others, why don’t some of these Democrats just start their own businesses and compete? Some do. Some do well. But for many of them, the very reason they are Democrats is that they are oriented toward government and politics rather than enterprise and self-reliance. In their worldview, government seems like the place where you should be getting your needs met because it is more fair, more benevolent and less greedy.

This is why they think it’s a scandal when banks and insurance companies make a profit. To them, a business should want no more than survival, and it’s greedy if it seeks profits. Government, after all, always survives, and while it takes a lot of money from others, it spends even more. It’s so beneficent in that way!

Many Democrats can’t make it in business because they don’t have the instincts for enterprise. It’s not in their blood. If they work for a government agency, a nonprofit or a union, they feel they are doing something virtuous. If they worked for a for-profit company, they would feel like sellouts.

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Of course, you could explain to them that a for-profit company doesn’t take in a dime unless it satisfies its paying customers, and you have to work hard and deliver value in order to do that. You could further explain that government agencies, nonprofits and unions often confiscate, beg for or demand the money they receive, and that’s arguably a much less worthy manner of getting what you need.

But they won’t understand that. So they stay in sectors that either depend on government or are government, and can’t get their brains around the idea that the private sector might be able to do just as well, or even better, the things they think government must do.

Take carbon emissions. Let’s assume for the sake of argument that it would be a good thing if carbon emissions are reduced, regardless of what you think of global warming. What does a Democrat think needs to happen in order to reduce carbon emissions? Tax them! Regulate industry! Send in UN inspectors!

Does the Democrat ever think that someone in the private sector might develop new technologies that would manufacture products more cleanly? Of course not. The Democrat can’t even conceive of why private industry would even want to do that. Democrats figure that, for big business, polluting while making a profit is half the fun.

So this explains why, as columnist George Will wrote recently, Democrats are intentionally seeking to make people dependent on government. It’s a simple attempt to gain market share. If you see the private sector, markets and your own individual initiatives as the source for the things you need, you are not going to want or need Democrats. Only if you don’t trust the private sector – that is, the government’s competition – will you seek the things Democrats offer.

When you hear someone from Pepsi take a shot at Coke, you take it with a grain of salt because you know it’s just one competitor trying to take market share from another. You don’t really consider that the people from Pepsi have a serious case to make against Coke’s quality. You recognize that it’s just competitive bluster.

When a Democrat rips big business, banks, insurance companies, oil companies, the rich or whoever, it’s exactly the same thing. If you have faith in these people and in these institutions – even a little faith, not that you think they’re perfect – you will probably be happy to deal with them. And even worse, if you have faith in yourself to make your own way in life, why would you ever need the government to take care of you?

Democrats are smart business people, all right. That’s because they understand they’re toast if you have any faith in any business – other than Government by Democrats Inc.

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