{"id":35255,"date":"2016-08-10T01:00:28","date_gmt":"2016-08-10T05:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=35255"},"modified":"2017-04-15T23:13:58","modified_gmt":"2017-04-16T03:13:58","slug":"qotd-pro-business-versus-pro-consumer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2016\/08\/10\/qotd-pro-business-versus-pro-consumer\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: &#8220;Pro-business&#8221; versus &#8220;Pro-consumer&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>In popular discourse, America is said to be more \u201cpro-business\u201d than is France. When people use this term \u201cpro-business\u201d they typically have in mind some vague notion of a government policy made up of low-ish taxes and not a great deal of government regulation. That is, \u201cpro-business\u201d is commonly used to mean a free, or free-ish, market.<\/p>\n<p>But such language is mistaken.<\/p>\n<p>A true free market is at its core pro-<em>consumer<\/em>. In a genuinely free-market economy, businesses are valued only insofar as they serve consumers. The performance of a genuinely free-market economy is assessed by how well it satisfies, over time, the demands of consumers spending their own money and not by how well it satisfies the demands of business owners and managers.<\/p>\n<p>Obviously, because businesses are a useful \u2013 indeed, practically indispensable \u2013 means of abundantly satisfying consumers\u2019 demands, government policies that obstruct the smooth operation of these means are undesirable. But such policies that obstruct or discourage business operations are economically undesirable not because they harm businesses but, rather, because they harm consumers.<\/p>\n<p>Anyway, for all of its faults, American culture and policy are actually much <em>less<\/em> pro-business than are the culture and policy of France. If you\u2019re really looking for a government that is deeply <em>pro-business<\/em> \u2013 one that regards the protection of existing businesses as a worthy end in and of itself \u2013 one that forcibly transfers resources from taxpayers, consumers, and other non-businesses in order to promote the material interests of existing businesses \u2013 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theverge.com\/2016\/6\/20\/11975404\/amazon-prime-now-paris-mayor-delivery\" target=\"_blank\">look at France. You\u2019ll find there what you seek. In France you\u2019ll find one of the most business-friendly policy regimes on the face of the earth<\/a>.  (HT Chris Meisenzahl)<\/p>\n<p>Pity the French.<\/p>\n<p>Don Boudreaux, <a href=\"http:\/\/cafehayek.com\/2016\/06\/41018.html\" target=\"_blank\">&#8220;Pity the French Consumer and Worker&#8221;, <em>Caf\u00e9 Hayek<\/em><\/a>, 2016-06-27.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In popular discourse, America is said to be more \u201cpro-business\u201d than is France. When people use this term \u201cpro-business\u201d they typically have in mind some vague notion of a government policy made up of low-ish taxes and not a great deal of government regulation. That is, \u201cpro-business\u201d is commonly used to mean a free, or [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,831,25,62,1117,41,13],"tags":[645,727,661],"class_list":["post-35255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bureaucracy","category-business","category-economics","category-europe","category-france","category-quotations","category-usa","tag-corporatewelfare","tag-cronycapitalism","tag-regulation"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-9aD","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35255","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35255"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35255\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35256,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35255\/revisions\/35256"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}