Ron DeCantis on American Corporatism
From "The Ratcatcher", an exclusive interview of Florida’s Governor Ron DeSantis with The American Conservative:
...As the governor leaned back in his chair behind the governor’s desk, I couldn’t help but get the feeling that, among the American right, DeSantis is well aware he’s pushing the envelope.
Over the past three years in particular, through Covid-19, DeSantis has built a brand as a no-nonsense conservative. While the governor, like the Floridians he’s been elected to represent, often frames these policy debates as "normal versus woke" and "common sense versus leftist insanity," the fundamental questions about his style of governance, particularly when it comes to Disney, are not lost on him. He is well aware he is challenging the establishment right’s preferred way of politics.
“What is a free market?” DeSantis shot back, cutting me off mid-question as I cited other right-of-center writers that complained DeSantis did not have adequate “fealty” to free-market principles.
“Does an absence of government necessarily mean free market?” DeSantis asked rhetorically. “I would say, sometimes, absence of government could just devolve into corporatism, and I think too many people on the right have basically been corporatists over the years.”
“What even is the free market is exactly the right [question],” <the executive director of American Compass Oren> Cass said when I told him about DeSantis’s comment. “The analogy I’ve started drawing that I think makes sense, is what do we mean by democracy? By democracy, we don’t mean everybody just votes on everything. Democracy is shorthand for actually a very sophisticated system of institutions with constraints and checks and balances.”
“Why is it that well intentioned, smart, free-market advocates have such a problem with what DeSantis is doing with Disney?” <Heritage Foundation President Kevin> Roberts asked. “It’s because they’re conflating the free market in theory, or the free market as an ideal, with mostly what we have in the United States today, which is corporatism.” From Roberts’s perspective, “Disney, like so many other Fortune 500 companies, has just lived at the trough of corporatism for too long, and then they shield themselves in the fake armor of the free market, when in fact, it isn’t the free market at all.”
When it comes to markets, “for conservatives, there are obviously a lot of things to really like,” Cass said. But conservatives differ from libertarians or free-market fundamentalists, in that they are willing to “recognize plenty of things to be concerned about when it comes to markets.” Markets “don’t take consideration of the many other non-market values that are as important if not more to human flourishing.”
Those “shilling for Disney” need to come to terms with the fact that “corporate America is not your friend on a lot of things,” DeSantis added, and if you “defer to corporations, you're going to end up seeing the economy and society go in ways that may not be advantageous for the majority of the people.”
His libertarian critics might bemoan our current welfare state, but they’re for a welfare of a different kind: corporate welfare.
“If you’re a libertarian, how do you justify Reedy Creek <i.e., the governing jurisdiction and special taxing district for the land of Walt Disney World Resort>? That’s the opposite of libertarianism,” DeSantis said with a firm, instructive tone towards his detractors. “It is corporate welfare,” DeSantis added. “We are under no obligation as a state to continue that arrangement.” Failing to act when a massive company with quasi-governmental powers vows “to wage a jihad against this bill legislatively means we're subsidizing that activity" amounts to subsidizing that behavior, DeSantis suggested. "Why would we want to subsidize that?"
<Florida State Rep. Spencer> Roach agreed. “What people in D.C. fail to recognize is the distinction between capitalism and crony capitalism,” he said. “And what has been allowed to happen with Disney over the last sixty years in Florida, it is, in my opinion, the most outrageous, the most egregious and the most naked example of crony capitalism in the history of America.”
The problem goes beyond the fact that Disney has gone “woke.” Our current economic structure has empowered many large companies with “quasi-public power” that “should cause us to be more engaged,” DeSantis argued.
“We’ve given them special privileges associated with sovereign governments, and let them exploit that to the economic disadvantage of people who would be their competitors,” Roach said, echoing the governor’s stance. “That’s simply wrong. That should not be allowed to happen in the state of Florida, it should not be allowed to happen in the United States.”
“If you look at some of these companies, like Google, and look at the footprint that they have, they don't necessarily offend historical antitrust law because the antitrust law is focusing on jacking up prices on people,” DeSantis admitted. “But I would say they’re exercising way more power than Standard Oil ever did, or any of the trust of the early 20th century. So the question is, is it okay to have a handful of private power centers that really, really dominate our society? And is it appropriate to have something like an antitrust principle applied there? I think it probably would be appropriate.”
Protecting what we believe is a free society,” for DeSantis, means preventing “social transformation without representation.”
“We’re a distinct country. We have a distinct people, and that needs to mean something. We have an identifiable culture. We have identifiable traditions,” he went on to say. “And I think a lot of [the left's] project is to really undermine a lot of the institutions and traditions and values that have stood the test of time.”
By using private actors to wield public power, the left, progressive and neoliberal, circumvents the will of the people. “Why would they try to do that? Because they want to delegitimize the founding of this country. Delegitimize the institutions that that generation spawned, and then say, you know what, our founding principles need to be modern day leftist ideology,” DeSantis told me.
“What Americans writ large are realizing is this is our moment.” Roberts said, commenting on the way DeSantis seems to be leading the charge against the left’s cultural agenda. “This is our moment to demand that our politicians use the power they have. This is the moment for us to demand of companies, whether they’re Google, or Facebook, or Disney, that you listen to us, rather than ram down our throats and into our own families all of the garbage that you’ve been pushing on us. This is our time to demand that you do what we say. And it’s glorious.”
“A lot of these fights are really foundational fights about what it means to be an American,” DeSantis said as our interview came to an end. “So, it’s something that we fight for.”
...As the governor leaned back in his chair behind the governor’s desk, I couldn’t help but get the feeling that, among the American right, DeSantis is well aware he’s pushing the envelope.
Over the past three years in particular, through Covid-19, DeSantis has built a brand as a no-nonsense conservative. While the governor, like the Floridians he’s been elected to represent, often frames these policy debates as "normal versus woke" and "common sense versus leftist insanity," the fundamental questions about his style of governance, particularly when it comes to Disney, are not lost on him. He is well aware he is challenging the establishment right’s preferred way of politics.
“What is a free market?” DeSantis shot back, cutting me off mid-question as I cited other right-of-center writers that complained DeSantis did not have adequate “fealty” to free-market principles.
“Does an absence of government necessarily mean free market?” DeSantis asked rhetorically. “I would say, sometimes, absence of government could just devolve into corporatism, and I think too many people on the right have basically been corporatists over the years.”
“What even is the free market is exactly the right [question],” <the executive director of American Compass Oren> Cass said when I told him about DeSantis’s comment. “The analogy I’ve started drawing that I think makes sense, is what do we mean by democracy? By democracy, we don’t mean everybody just votes on everything. Democracy is shorthand for actually a very sophisticated system of institutions with constraints and checks and balances.”
“Why is it that well intentioned, smart, free-market advocates have such a problem with what DeSantis is doing with Disney?” <Heritage Foundation President Kevin> Roberts asked. “It’s because they’re conflating the free market in theory, or the free market as an ideal, with mostly what we have in the United States today, which is corporatism.” From Roberts’s perspective, “Disney, like so many other Fortune 500 companies, has just lived at the trough of corporatism for too long, and then they shield themselves in the fake armor of the free market, when in fact, it isn’t the free market at all.”
When it comes to markets, “for conservatives, there are obviously a lot of things to really like,” Cass said. But conservatives differ from libertarians or free-market fundamentalists, in that they are willing to “recognize plenty of things to be concerned about when it comes to markets.” Markets “don’t take consideration of the many other non-market values that are as important if not more to human flourishing.”
Those “shilling for Disney” need to come to terms with the fact that “corporate America is not your friend on a lot of things,” DeSantis added, and if you “defer to corporations, you're going to end up seeing the economy and society go in ways that may not be advantageous for the majority of the people.”
His libertarian critics might bemoan our current welfare state, but they’re for a welfare of a different kind: corporate welfare.
“If you’re a libertarian, how do you justify Reedy Creek <i.e., the governing jurisdiction and special taxing district for the land of Walt Disney World Resort>? That’s the opposite of libertarianism,” DeSantis said with a firm, instructive tone towards his detractors. “It is corporate welfare,” DeSantis added. “We are under no obligation as a state to continue that arrangement.” Failing to act when a massive company with quasi-governmental powers vows “to wage a jihad against this bill legislatively means we're subsidizing that activity" amounts to subsidizing that behavior, DeSantis suggested. "Why would we want to subsidize that?"
<Florida State Rep. Spencer> Roach agreed. “What people in D.C. fail to recognize is the distinction between capitalism and crony capitalism,” he said. “And what has been allowed to happen with Disney over the last sixty years in Florida, it is, in my opinion, the most outrageous, the most egregious and the most naked example of crony capitalism in the history of America.”
The problem goes beyond the fact that Disney has gone “woke.” Our current economic structure has empowered many large companies with “quasi-public power” that “should cause us to be more engaged,” DeSantis argued.
“We’ve given them special privileges associated with sovereign governments, and let them exploit that to the economic disadvantage of people who would be their competitors,” Roach said, echoing the governor’s stance. “That’s simply wrong. That should not be allowed to happen in the state of Florida, it should not be allowed to happen in the United States.”
“If you look at some of these companies, like Google, and look at the footprint that they have, they don't necessarily offend historical antitrust law because the antitrust law is focusing on jacking up prices on people,” DeSantis admitted. “But I would say they’re exercising way more power than Standard Oil ever did, or any of the trust of the early 20th century. So the question is, is it okay to have a handful of private power centers that really, really dominate our society? And is it appropriate to have something like an antitrust principle applied there? I think it probably would be appropriate.”
Protecting what we believe is a free society,” for DeSantis, means preventing “social transformation without representation.”
“We’re a distinct country. We have a distinct people, and that needs to mean something. We have an identifiable culture. We have identifiable traditions,” he went on to say. “And I think a lot of [the left's] project is to really undermine a lot of the institutions and traditions and values that have stood the test of time.”
By using private actors to wield public power, the left, progressive and neoliberal, circumvents the will of the people. “Why would they try to do that? Because they want to delegitimize the founding of this country. Delegitimize the institutions that that generation spawned, and then say, you know what, our founding principles need to be modern day leftist ideology,” DeSantis told me.
“What Americans writ large are realizing is this is our moment.” Roberts said, commenting on the way DeSantis seems to be leading the charge against the left’s cultural agenda. “This is our moment to demand that our politicians use the power they have. This is the moment for us to demand of companies, whether they’re Google, or Facebook, or Disney, that you listen to us, rather than ram down our throats and into our own families all of the garbage that you’ve been pushing on us. This is our time to demand that you do what we say. And it’s glorious.”
“A lot of these fights are really foundational fights about what it means to be an American,” DeSantis said as our interview came to an end. “So, it’s something that we fight for.”
