Just Because Right Wingers are Abandoning Economic Royalism Doesn't Mean We Should Adopt It

 

Anything but vax or mask mandates

A funny thing seems to be happening to right wingers.  After generations of making economic royalism their central ideological principle, they are now starting to move away from it.

In some ways, I suppose, this was inevitable.  Liberals have been expecting for a long time that there will have to be a breach between economic and social conservatives because sooner or later social conservatives will have to notice that the unregulated workings of the free market in general, and large corporations in particular, are not very socially conservative.  It is happening now.

Liberals have vainly argued for a long time that government does not have a monopoly on oppression,  and that large concentrations of private power can also oppress.  And conservatives are finally coming around to agree.  We just disagree on when private companies oppress.

Liberals believe that private companies oppress when they sell unsafe products, when they hide slanted terms in the fine print, when they pay non-living wages, when they have unsafe working conditions, when they pollute the environment, when they build mines or factories that disrupt communities’ peace and quiet, when they consume a community’s infrastructure but demand tax exemptions to stay, when they do things that endanger health and safety.

Conservatives are still fine with all those things, but they have found other reasons to object to what large corporations do.  Conservatives see corporations as oppressive when they try to protect their employees and customers by insisting on vaccines or masks.  Or when social media companies impose some sort of standards on right wing posters.  Or when conservatives don’t get as many likes and shares on social media as they thing they ought.  Or when corporations advocate for a liberal viewpoint, like pro-voting rights.  Economic royalist who for years have been defending corporations free speech rights to bribe politicians with unlimited campaign contributions believe the corporations are going altogether too far when they directly express opinions that conservatives don’t like.  And although right wingers remain dead set against any sort of health and safety regulations, they don’t actually mind regulations to ensure that things are less healthy and less safe.

So what is a liberal to make of all this?  As least some responses I have seen sound downright economic royalist.  Social media companies have the complete First Amendment right to exclude any viewpoints they wish.  Employers have the right to put any conditions on employment they want.  Businesses have the right to exclude unwanted customers, or to impose any conditions on customers that they wish.

These are all essentially “procedural” arguments, making the case that corporations, as non-state actors, are free to do things not allowed to the state.  Granted, this is not quite the same as an argument that corporations can do no wrong, but the arguments easily blend into one another.  If a corporation has the right to ensure a safe workplace, why shouldn’t it have the right to have an unsafe workplace, and anyone who doesn’t like it can work somewhere else?  If social media companies have the complete right to remove false, inflammatory, or defamatory posts, why not true and restrained posts that the mediators just don’t agree with?

Rather than make the procedural argument that corporations should be free to do whatever they want, I would rather our side step forward and argue that these corporations are doing the right thing.

Social media companies are not just exercising their First Amendment rights to exclude viewpoints they disagree with.  They are benefitting from a special privilege granted by the state, the notorious Section 230(c), which makes internet service providers immune from suit for any post they publish, and also to be immune from suit from any post they remove.  The privilege that the state grants, it can also withdraw. The government could repeal the first part of Section 230(c) and make internet service providers liable for content they publish, wich would shut such providers down altogether.  Or it could repeal the second part, and make internet service providers liable for anything they remove.  

Many right wingers think they want to end all content moderation and require social media to publish anything that shows up.  But really they don’t.  Gresham's Law applies to social media as well as to currency – the bad drives out the good.  A social media company with no content moderation will be overrun by pornography – or even jihadi recruiting and beheading videos.*

And if we believe that social media companies should be free to take down pornography or jihadi terrorists, then why not false, inflammatory, or defamatory materials, materials that promote crime, etc. So far as I can tell, right wingers ultimately, at some level, agree.  They just think they are targeted too often.  To which I can only reply, Twitter keeps track of the top 10 Facebook links.  Right wing sites routinely outperform leftwing or mainstream new sites.  The party of personal responsibility should show a little.  If right wing sites get removed or banned more often than left wing or mainstream sites, maybe it's because they lie more often and engage in more inflammatory and defamatory posts.  

And as for business vaccine or mask mandates, let's come right out and say it.  Instead of arguing that businesses should be free of regulations, either to make them more healthy and safe or less healthy and safe, let's take the opposite tack.  Rules to promote health and safety are good, whether enacted and enforced by government or private actors.

I have discussed before what makes democracy hard:

[Democracy] values procedure over substance. It demands obedience to leaders who are chosen by the right procedure (i.e, who win the election), regardless of how loathsome their values or policies may be to us. It expects us to treat abstract procedural details, such as federalism or separation of powers, as more important than the actual merits of what policy to adopt. It insists that we respect the rights of people we despise (sometimes deservedly). Freedom of expression makes no distinction between good and bad ideas, but expects us to give equal privilege to even the vilest ideas that surely have nothing to contribute. And, to people who believe that their religion is the sole path to Heaven, freedom of religion requires us to allow the spread of false doctrines that will condemn countless people to Hell. These are not easy rules to swallow.

Well, the good news is that we don't have to apply these rules to economic royalism.  In discussing whether an economic regulation is justified, if we oppose a rule, say, banning private business from imposing vaccine or mask mandates, or requiring social media to publish all right-wing posts, no matter how false, inflammatory, or defamatory, we don't have to oppose them with the procedural argument that all regulations are bad and the private sector can do no wrong.  We should be free to argue for or against regulations on the substantive merits.

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*And, in fact, even Trump's GETTR network as terms of service applying some standards.