OK, this particular post came from one of my “hard anagorist” moods, which is a deviation from my normally “soft anagorist” attitude. Some things that lead me to believe (in America today) the business sector is more powerful than the public sector:

1. Independence from business interests seems impossible for policymakers to achieve, with the possible exception of independently wealthy politicians such as Michael Bloomberg or political candidates such as H. Ross Perot. who of course are members of the ruling class to start with. Put another way, a political career—like any other means of personal support, economic activity, potentially world-influencing project—has to have a “business model” that is “monetized.”

2. The “overton window,” or range of politically feasible outcomes in America, clearly exclude any form of economic populism. For better or for worse, “single payer” was “off the table” before legislative horse-trading even began for “health care reform.” I’m saying this not to endorse single payer, but to point out that business interests determine the boundaries of public policy discussion. Globally, the range of political discussion is narrowed by multilateral trade treaties that make tariffs and economic regulation into treaty violations, let alone decisions by in-theory sovereign nation states to implement a “mixed economy.”

Some things that lead me to believe that government is more powerful than business:

1. Financial footprint: It’s easy to point out that some businesses are larger than some nation states, but comparing the largest business (by most measures, probably ExxonMobil) with the (financially) largest government (the United States), the latter is clearly about an order of magnitude larger in many measures of financial bigness, such as number of employees, amount of expenditures, cost of capital, etc. There’s a case that government (at least of the United States) weilds more “market power” than business. But I question whether the large financial footprint of the nation state is more than cancelled out by the tactical disadvantages of imposed by the deliberative process of government.

2. Coercion: While I’m not willing to frame it as the political issue, clearly it is a political issue. While the business sector can’t be described as entirely civilian (and the government can’t realistically be described as having a de facto “monopoly of force”), clearly no business, and probably no combination of businesses, commands comparable military resources. But with government, at least in theory, there is, as pointed out above, a deliberate process for policy making, due process rights and rights of appeal for accused persons. Business (including small business) is usually a top-down hierarchy when it comes to policy. While termination with cause and even worker blacklisting are technically noncoercive and the worker is technically “free to go elsewhere,” I am not convinced that the relative freedom of “exit” offered by employment relative to citizenship, and even the relative coercivity of punishments meted out by the state, is not more than cancelled out by the summary and largely non-negotiable nature of business decisions adverse to individuals.