Democratic Control of the Economy and the Apple Anti-trust Suit
Apple is not natural.
The corporation, that is, not the fruit. Apple the corporation is the creation of the government. It is important to remember this, because two strains of thought that have outsized influence on our economic and political elites: that corporations exist to serve the needs of shareholders only and that anti-trust is measured only by what consumers pay. Both are ahistorical and illogical blights upon common sense and self-government.
Before the government created the legal structure that allowed the Apple corporation to exist, businesspeople risked essentially all of their assets when creating a firm. Now, in order to foster commerce, the government has created legal fictions that limit the liability of member of those fictions, made it easier for them to raise funds under certain kinds of circumstances, and conduct certain kinds of business. Businesspeople are given certain protections, especially around personal and asset liability, in exchange for hoped for economic benefits to society at large.
The phrase “society at large” is key. It is not just shareholders that corporations are meant to benefit, but all of society. Otherwise, society, acting under the auspices of democratic government, would not grant corporations so many benefits. The needs of all stakeholders, not just shareholders, have to be taken into account. Corporations are given great benefits, which lead to great economic power, which lead to great political power. And power needs to be democratically controlled, or it becomes tyranny, whether that power is operated from a government or from a corporation. The government has an obligation to hold corporations to a higher standard given that it is the source of corporations’ wealth and power to a large degree. As far as I am concerned, if the government decides everyone who works for a corporation should go to work in a penguin suit, then you better hope you look good in black and white tails. I realize that is a touch extreme (and please don’t do this. If you think my typos are bad now, just imagine how bad they would be with flippers), but the point remains: any construction of the government is by definition subject to greater scrutiny and, if necessary, regulation.
A similar argument applies to anti-trust. If a corporation abuses its power in a way that harms labor or the communities in which it is situated, then anti-trust must apply. A corporation cannot escape the consequences of its abuse of government granted, or at least government abetted, power, simply because those abuses don’t directly affect consumers. The point of the artificial benefits granted to corporations is to benefit society. When those benefits harm society, any part of society, it is not only appropriate but incumbent upon the government to step in to correct the harm today and prevent its reoccurrence tomorrow. Anything less is an abandonment of the ideal of democratic control of the economy, and thus of democracy itself.
Democratic control of the economy is a necessary condition for democracy to exist at all. If you allow the very creations of the government become so powerful that they run roughshod over the society that birthed them, then you do not have a functioning society. The greatest trick the Devil ever played was convincing people that markets were natural, like the air and the earth and the sun. They are not. They are created, ordered, policed, and maintained by governments. Businesses exist only because the rest of society find it beneficial to spend the time and resources necessary to create the conditions for them to exists. And that is fine — society can benefit from properly regulated markets. But the participants in those markets must live up to their obligations within them.
Apple is alleged to have abused the power of those markets, the power granted to them in part by the special status being a corporation. It is entirely appropriate for the government to reign them in and prevent them from doing further harm to competitors, employees, suppliers and consumers. Anything less, any retreat from that principle, any pretending that shareholders and consumers are somehow more important than society at large, is a surrender of democracy itself. A government that cannot protect its members from the abuses of power by entities within or without is not a functioning government. Forty years of the fantasies of economists have left of perilously close to no real government at all. It’s good to see the Biden administration, through actions like holding Apple account for its abuses, try and bring us back to reality.