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Are You a Greedy Businessman? (part 2)

By Theresa Fritz Camoriano

In part 1, we realized that, if we consider our households to be businesses, most of us are greedy businessmen, trying to sell our products and services at a high price while seeking low prices for our purchases.  Of course, in a free market, this works out just fine, with buyers and sellers haggling and keeping each other honest, so our greed does no harm and in fact provides the goods and services people want and need at a reasonable price.  But what if we could rig the system for our personal benefit in order to profit even more?

If voluntary buying and selling in the open market doesn’t make us rich enough, we might lobby government officials to put us in a special category, so the taxpayers would be forced to subsidize us.  In fact, many folks have taken that route.  For example, some farmers receive outright payments from taxpayers.  Other farmers, such as those who grow peanuts and sugar cane, benefit from import duties that protect them from competition.  Similarly, the steel industry is protected by import duties.  Why don’t we ever hear these farmers and steel industry folks referred to as greedy?

Many corporations receive government subsidies to advertise abroad or sell abroad.  Others receive government contracts for everything from manufacturing defense equipment, to doing scientific research, to building highways and arenas.  In all these cases, taxpayers are forced to pay, regardless of the cost or quality of goods and services.  Defense contractors are often referred to as being greedy, but why not researchers, college professors, and construction workers as well, since they are just as much on the government dole? 

Doctors benefit from government payments for Medicare and Medicaid.  Social workers profit from government programs that are supposedly intended to help poor people. Teachers in public schools are paid entirely from taxes extracted by force.  All these people are benefiting from a system that has been rigged in their favor, forcing taxpayers to support them, but they always get good press and are never referred to as being greedy.  In fact, they are often pitied as not receiving enough money.  If they don’t think they get enough under the rigged system, maybe they’d like to compete in a free market like the rest of us?

Corn farmers profit from government regulations that require the addition of ethanol to gasoline.  Indeed, that seems to be the only logical reason to require the use of ethanol additives.  But those farmers are never referred to as being greedy.  How do they manage to get such good press while they are reaching their hands into most of our back pockets? 

Somehow, in today’s world, the people who use the law to rob others are treated as if they were angels, while those who just want to keep what they earn and not be plundered are called selfish and greedy.  Amazing! 

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