A depressing bit of reality from Ray Haynes this week. Speaking of the business community in California, he writes:
They are afraid, they tell me, of retaliation from the government, if they don’t oppose the initiative. Local governments are telling business and developers that, if they don’t oppose Proposition 90, they will make their business lives miserable. They are being told that if they donate money, their projects will be fast tracked. However, if they don’t help, their projects will go into some sort of governmental purgatory, lost in the bowels of some regulatory or planning agency until the new temple is built in Jerusalem. I am told that they have to oppose us because they just can’t risk it.
That is how far down the road to socialism California has gone. So much of the financial future of our business community depends on government action that the business community trembles in fear of the government officials. The ruling class in California knows that Proposition 90 will be their Waterloo, and they are trying to enlist the aid of all of their economic slaves to fight this last battle. The business community, now the economic slaves of our state government, is willing to sell out the freedom of us all to stay in business.
Curse Hayek for being so right.