Don’t Seek

The Virginia Chamber of Commerce's 2009 Conference on Virginia's Future heard a ringing defense of free markets. Publisher Tom Silvestri described the event in Sunday's Commentary section. Unfettered markets remain not only generators of prosperity but guarantors of liberty. Although pure laissez-faire does not exist, an economic and political system that keeps state intervention to a minimum is a system most likely to produce happiness.

Denunciations of regulation, taxation, and other examples of a heavy hand impose obligations. Socialists are not the only ones who promote big government. The private sector eagerly cultivates many of the influences it claims to abhor. Companies often expect handouts, incentives, and exemptions.

Behavior known as "rent-seeking" is particularly egregious. One of the best definitions of rent-seeking comes from Auburn University's Paul Johnson:

"The expenditure of resources in order to bring about an uncompensated transfer of goods or services from another person or persons to one's self as the result of a 'favorable' decision on some public policy. The term seems to have been coined (or at least popularized in contemporary political economy) by the economist Gordon Tullock. Examples of rent-seeking behavior would include all of the various ways by which individuals or groups lobby government for taxing, spending, and regulatory policies that confer financial benefits or other special advantages upon them at the expense of the taxpayers or of consumers or of other groups or individuals with which the beneficiaries may be in economic competition."

Rent-seeking distorts the process and mocks market idealism. The seeking portion of the equation is crucial. Private interests seek the rent, i.e., the advantage, the edge. The impetus originates with the private sector. The public sector frequently complies. Statist intervention or manipulation does not always come from the top down; many examples originate in the very sector that likes to celebrate its autonomy. Seek, and ye shall lose.