Needed — a Separation of Business and State
Power is a two edged sword. Without it nothing can be done. But too much unchecked power can do great harm. Rather like how a river can provide both water for crops and electricity but also flood drowning crops, buildings, and people.
People are usually very aware of the dangers of a powerful government. But too many seem either unaware or unconcerned about the dangers of powerful businesses. Or even worse, they actively promote policies and laws leading to increasingly unchecked, more powerful businesses.
In fact, many believe that one of the government’s chief responsibilities is to support business whenever and however possible. That by so doing, by becoming the helper and promoter of all things business the government is also helping the people by encouraging job growth and wages.
Now, the government does have a duty to foster business to make sure that businesses flourish and so provide both good jobs and products for people. However, alongside that duty, and by far the more important, the government also has a duty to protect the people. That includes from businesses, especially big businesses that start to prey, take advantage of people, and cause harm.
From what I see the best government is one that has not only separation of powers, and separation of church and state, but also separation of state and business.
Let’s start with the basics. What is the primary purpose of the government? Who is government created for?
The answer will depend on the type of government. But for Democracies, and the United States is a Democratic Constitutional Republic, the government was formed for the people. Not for the rich, not for businesses, not for religions, but for the people as a whole.
From our Declaration of Independence:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness
All men, now updated to include women and the men our founders ignored, blacks.
Or from our Constitution
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
To protect the people of the United States — protect their rights, their freedoms, to do all of the above, we have created certain checks to power.
For the government, we have a separation of governmental power into Legislative, Judicial, and Presidential; with each branch having ways to limit other branches. As well we have a Constitution that lays out the powers of each branch as well as goes over the rights of the people that cannot be infringed by the government, period. And then we have a federal system of government, where some power is to the states and others to the federal government.
I will say that though this has worked relatively well for almost 250 years, it has been failing recently. It has not totally failed yet, but it is in a definite battle for its soul as a democracy. And that is something that will have to be looked at going forward.
To protect the people from religious power we have separated the church and the state. That too has held up fairly well over the last 250 years, but is also showing signs of fraying.
Finally, there is business. Business, and let me make this term a very broad one to include the very rich, also have a great deal of power. Yet there is no formal mechanism set up to protect the people from abuses of that power. The only force capable of working against abuses by large businesses is the government.
But many would say that the invisible hand of commerce and the free market will regulate business. Those providing inferior services or unsafe products or having unsafe working conditions will lose business and employees respectively, and so have to make adjustments.
And yet history shows this reasoning to be not just wrong, but disastrously wrong.
Consider something many do not know about — the Railroad and Coal company towns of the late 19 thand early 20 thcenturies. These were towns built and owned by these companies in which their workers, along with their families, were required to live to stay employed. The houses the workers and their families lived in were almost always cheap and identical. Most often the only money that could be used was company script, good only for the company town.
The stores selling food and clothing and tools and other supplies for the workers in these towns were also owned by the company. As was the Post Office. The companies made a tidy profit with these stores and towns. Especially since wages were low and prices high due to the captive situation of the workers. This, of course, often caused the workers to get into debt. Debt to the company.
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These, fortunately, largely disappeared as the 20 thcentury wore on with the increase in mobility from the car as well as a strong post WW 1 American economy, eventually led to their demise.
Or consider plant and workshop safety and conditions in the late 19 thand early 20 thcenturies. The safety and health of our food. Child labor. Long hours for six days a week. And more. I am not going to go over that in the same broad detail I did for company towns due to many people knowing more about this, but for just a taste of this for Industrial Safety there is this.
Hard estimated that each year 1,200 men were killed or injured out of a work force of about 10,000. He described an accident in which a man was roasted alive by molten slag that spilled from a giant ladle when a hook from an overhead crane carrying it slipped. The ladle lacked proper lugs and the hook had been attached precariously to the rim. Hard argued that U.S. Steel had ample ability to reduce accidents but lacked strong incentive to do so. When a man was killed on the job, there was only one chance in five that the company would ever have to pay compensation to his survivors.
For Food Safety I highly recommend Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle.
Bottom line is that businesses at the start of the 20 thcentury were largely unregulated by government and their only motive was profit.
Because of that many thousands of workers were injured or had their health permanently damaged, including that of children as young as 5 working in factories and mines (a 1900 census found that there were 1.75 million child workers between the ages of 10–15 working in mines. By 1911 over 2 million children under the age of 16 were working, usually for 12 hour days.
Because profit was all and there was little to no regulation of businesses, Americans were fed tainted unsafe food and were sickened, with many dying. It was why cigarette companies denied the dangers of smoking for many years after it was well establish.
Because of this thousands of workers died or were permanently maimed.
This blog is already shaping up to be longer than I had intended, so let me just say to investigate on your own. Aside for a few limited examples, none of the above abuses and the many others I have not mentioned (clean air and water, etc.) were stopped by businesses, but by government actions. By people pressing the government to act.
What this means is whatever the government does to promote businesses should also be necessary for the benefit of people, of the citizens. Too often government supports laws and measures meant to benefit businesses only even though it harms the people. Eliminating laws promoting a clean environment, conserving water, and that promote competition between businesses for example.
Much of this is because many have all bought into the idea that business should always and only be about profit. It does not matter if the profit comes from abusing their employees; from turning out inferior or even unsafe products; from unfair business practices forcing out the competition; the only thing that matters is the profit. And not just turning a profit, but turning out a large profit. With the goal always to increase the size of that profit.
Combined that with the idea that the role of government is too often viewed as to get out of the of businesses pursuing their profit; indeed that government should help business turn a profit. Decisions made most often with little to no concern on how government help to business will impact the great majority of citizens.
Today we are seeing the rise of big businesses and conglomerations as well as extremely wealthy, returning us to the Gilded Age where nothing was denied big business and the wealthy, and life was beautiful for them. For the rest though, the public, the everyday person, the small business, life was ugly and hard. It is enlightening to see that the wealth inequality during the Gilded Age is comparable to what we see today with the top 10% owning 90% of all wealth and 40% of the people having no wealth at all.
And without wealth, no power. Not on their own. Not without government helping. The people have a great deal more power to change the government than they do big corporations.
Today though that influence is greatly diminished by two things.
The first is the Citizens United Ruling, finding that large corporations can donate money to a private group for political purposes. That ruling struck down long standing legal prohibitions on such spending by corporations. It opened the floodgates to massive amount of money going to PACs which then worked closely with campaigns and political parties. Money became even more important than before. And politicians who want to be re-elected always had to keep that in mind. Corporations voices became even louder than that of the regular person.
The other is the transformation of the Republican Party, starting in the 1960s, into two conjoined parties.
One consisting of largely anti-government libertarians who think all government is dangerous and should be kept small and starved, and should have limited say in anything beyond defense of country and law enforcement. Which meant that government should not create laws regulating business as, according to these people, the government would only make things worse. They firmly believe that businesses can always do it better and should be left to itself to do so. Usually this is accompanied by a faith in the invisible hands mentioned earlier, a largely misplaced faith.
Along with this the Republican Party also transformed into a party of the wealthy, and then the uber wealthy. An interesting contrast that was mutually beneficial for both parts of the Republican Party for a long time. The rich worked with those who favored deregulation on all things limiting business and wealth.
Now that this disjointed twin has gained power it will be interesting to see how long this division can continue to work together. Especially as the results of the uber wealthy calling the shots (what, you don’t’ really think the unwashed masses would be did you?) and life gets worse for the libertarians and those sympathetic to such instead of better.
Going forward, we should be looking at measures to separate business and government. Separate wealth and government. Campaign spending and donation limits would be a good start. Creating laws that would negate the Citizens United ruling. Also raising taxes on the wealthy and corporation and reinvesting that money into projects and actions that benefit the regular people — infrastructure, education, health improvements, etc.
But first we need to separate business from government.
Originally published at http://badatheist.wordpress.com on May 14, 2026.
