The Myth of Private Companies
The great Tom Woods has made something of a meme about a common retort to libertarian ideas. Some people with a rather shallow understanding of freedom will see a criticism of a corporation or other nominally private business coming from a libertarian and immediately realize an irreconcilable paradox in their reasoning: “You can’t complain about a private company. That’s just the market at work, and you are supposed to approve of everything the market does!”
It shouldn’t take too much mental legwork to realize this argument is nonsense. Of course private actors aren’t immune from criticism, and they aren’t infallible. Their errors are what drive away customers or provoke a reaction from them. That response should then change the companies actions or policies. That is the market at work. In a free market, it is the consumer who is infallible (they want what they want) and failure to respond to consumers ultimately dooms companies. Dr. Woods has pointed out other issues with the supposed immunity private companies have from criticism, when it comes to, for example, who they decide to serve:
I think Tom does fantastic work, but this response, while valid, misses the bigger point. The argument is that nation-wide and often transnational corporations can determine whatever rules they want for employment and coercing them has no place in a free or liberty-minded ideology. Opposition to this idea is tantamount to government regulation of the economy. Reason just made a similar argument.
I specify large businesses above for a reason. Does anyone think small businesses give a damn about vaccine status? Is your local mom and pop store or family restaurant or gym firing anyone over this? When many of them have barely been able to survive the last 18 months anyway? It’s probably happened somewhere, I guess, once.
But no, the big drivers of employer mandates are big business. Airlines, big tech, food processors, hospital chains, and, surprise surprise, government agencies are the ones you hear about. Now why is this? If the small, private hardware store down the street doesn’t care about vaccines, why should the private big box store?
Because the latter isn’t a private company. Not in any recognizable sense of the word. Southwest Airlines has received billions of dollars in loans from the government in the last year. CEOs of tech corporations have been called before Congress to testify. The Biden administration continues to claim that regulations are coming to force vaccine mandates. The message is clear, every business that is caught in the eye of government has to submit to its demands or risk increased regulation or the loss of easy money.
Regulatory capture is present as well of course. No one is more eager to see increased oversight on what is and is not allowed under federal law on the internet than Facebook. The corporations are not innocent victims of government control, but that isn’t the point. What should be clear is that once a company grows to a certain size in this country, it necessarily becomes, at least in part, a public firm.
So no, these are not private companies responding to market forces. They are public-private hybrids who are following political whims. This is how they survive in our current state, and it is how they thrive. Criticism of their decisions, or curtailment of their power over individuals is no more a threat to human liberty than any other state or local action against the federal government.