By Charles C. W. Cooke
Monday, July 13, 2015
It is a supreme irony of modern American life that the
political movement that terms itself “progressive” is, in the economic realm at
least, increasingly passionate about the status quo. Speaking today about the
burgeoning “gig economy,” presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton could
not help herself but to set modernity firmly within aging ideological
tram-lines. Developments such as AirBnB, Zaarly, Uber, DogVacay, and
RelayRides, Clinton conceded, are not likely to “go away” any time soon. But
they are worrying nonetheless. Indeed, the “sharing economy,” she proposed, is
“polarizing” and it is disruptive — guilty of no less than “displacing or
downgrading blue-collar jobs.” Technological advances, she concluded, must not
“determine our destiny.”
And who should “determine our destiny”? Why, Hillary
Clinton of course!
In the eyes of us free-marketeers, the teams behind the
host of new peer-to-peer services are no less than digital liberators. For us,
the arrival of a system such as Uber is salutary, not scary: It is an end to
waiting in the rain for a state-approved cab; it is the key to a transportation
experience a cut above that which is provided by the cartels; it is the source
of golden opportunities for those who wish to construct odd or custom-built
work schedules or to make money without answering to a boss. That a few
ingenious programmers have found a way around the artificial scarcity,
state-union collusion, and high barriers to entry that The Man has seen fit to
impose is, in our view, an extremely positive development. More of this,
please.
But for Hillary Clinton? It is a death knell. Like Bill
de Blasio before her, Clinton has seen the list of newly available iPhone apps,
and she has grasped her own obsolescence.
If he is smart, the eventual Republican nominee will
spend 2016 casting Clinton as the spirit animal of a washed-out and
intellectually bankrupt generation that belongs nowhere near the levers of
power. If they are really smart, the broader party will make this case broadly
and perpetually — and long after next year’s election is over. All political
movements are guilty of nostalgia, certainly. But few of them refuse to
acknowledge their sentimentality in quite the same way as does the wing of the
Democratic party to which Clinton is currently attempting to agglutinate
herself. From self-described “conservatives,” one expects a Burkean preference
for the tried and tested. From “progressives” — and yes, Hillary used the word
today – not so much.
Economically, the Clinton-Sanders-Warren-O’Malley project
is stuck squarely in 1938. Theirs is a country in which tax rates can be set
without reference to global competition; in which the taxi commission and the
trade union are the heroes while the entrepreneurs and the dissenters are a
royal pain in the ass; in which families can simply not be trusted to determine
which services suit their needs and which do not. It’s a country in which our
heinously outdated, grossly illiberal, neo-Prussian educational system is to be
set more firmly in place — even as it crumbles and falls. It is a country in
which the state must determine which firms are Good and which firms are Bad, and
reward or punish them according to its whim. It is a country in which Upton
Sinclair is an up-and-coming writer, and in which anybody who doubts the
efficacy of federal control is in danger of falling headfirst into a rendering
vat.
Most important, perhaps, it is an America in which one’s
opportunity to customize one’s life is reserved to the social and sexual
spheres. Sure, the freelance writer in Brooklyn and the on-off driver who picks
him up might think that they are entering into a mutually beneficial contract.
The backpacking student from California and the Chicago apartment owner who
hosts him might think that they have been liberated by technology, and the
stay-at-home parent who makes knick-knacks and sells them on Etsy might think
that he has a sweet deal. But from Hillary Clinton’s intolerably prescriptive
perspective, they have failed to think through the consequences of their
arrangements. One can tell a great deal about a person’s broader worldview by
asking them a simple question: “Should one person who hopes to pay another
person to perform a legal service be restricted from doing so by the state?”
That Clinton used the words “crack” and “down” when attempting to answer that
inquiry should worry you.
Once upon a time in a faraway place, many of the policies
preferred by the Democratic party of 2015 were at least practically defensible.
Because most of the rest of the world had been destroyed by total war, the
federal government could impose pretty much whatever taxes and regulations it
liked without fear that employers would move elsewhere. Because most people
worked in a single industry for their entire careers, they were often in
genuine need of both a uniform system of schooling and of adequate
representation in the workplace. Because good information was generally hard to
get hold of, bureaucrats could act as virtuous protectors of the unwittingly
ignorant, and not as cynical reapers of public treasure. That country is gone,
and in its place is a big, diverse, fractured mess. We are all struggling to
work out how to navigate our way through the chaos. But only some of us are
taking aim at the navigators.
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