Ralph Nader

I've been reading the book The Politics of Free Markets: The Rise of Neoliberal Economic Policies in Britain, France, Germany, & the United States, and there's a chapter on deregulation that shows the dangers of pursuing progressive policy goals within a conservative frame.

The short version of the story is that in the 1970s, some liberals took a critical look at the regulatory state and decided that rather than protecting the public, it was in effect subsidizing companies that didn't need it (contrary to what I thought, it was liberals that deregulated certain industries in the 1970s). Ralph Nader lead the movement from the left, but as it turned out he had a lot in common with a pre-presidential Ronald Reagan. Take this mind-exploding exchange from 1975:

Reagan: I agree with you about business and the fact that business is responsible in part for going along with regulations that finally have led to some advantages for them such as preventing entry of new businesses into the field, competition, price fixing, and so forth. I still think those businesses are wrong. And I think ti's led to what I call an interlocking bureaucracy. That the bureaucracy in government is now being matched by a bureaucracy employed by business to do business with the bureaucracy here and now you have two bureaucracies feeding on each and neither one of them wants the other to go away because then they wouldn't have a job.
Nader:If you make that your campaign theme next year you'd be making a major contribution to the American dialogue.
Reagan: Well. I-
Nader: Speaking out against corporate socialism and government subsidies of big business where big corporations are so big they can't be allowed to fail; only small businesses can go bankrupt, but if you're big like Lockheed and those other companies you can go to Washington instead....Massive outflow of the taxpayer's revenue into the coffers of these giant corporations...people who say they're conservatives do not speak out enough against monopolistic practices, highly concentrated industry; they don't speak for the enforcement of the antitrust laws for beefing up the Justice Depeartment's budget; they don't speak against the massive, inflated contracts and subsidies that pour out of Washington which makes up the bulk of government...And if you speak out against that, politics will be enriched.

Nader then lists the parts of the federal government he wanted to see eliminated. Indeed, Reagan and Nader agree that the solution is to eliminate government, rather than reduce corporate influence. Their biggest disagreements were probably over which programs to eliminate.

This movement kicked off a sweep of deregulation that didn't benefit consumers. As the author puts it, "Public opinion in favor of the populist consumers' movement, and this movement's late-1960s to mid-1970s salience...lit the torch under the deregulatory effort. Executive control of deregulation and the 'frame ambiguity' of the cultural Left allowed Ronald Reagan to shift this effort in favor of business."

There's a lot to unpack here. I think the whole episode is analogous to the anti-poverty debate. Anti-poverty advocates, many of which are Nader's contemporaries and are set back by the same "frame ambiguity," construct their arguments according to a progressive understanding of the conservative impulse to do charity, which John thoughtfully wrote about. Their case for reducing poverty centers around a magnanimous donor (the public) and a deserving recipient (the poor). Conservatives easily reinterpret this framing to support their policy goals.

But I also think it shows that progressives should be careful when we frame policy that unfairly benefits corporations and the rich, something that got considerable attention when Bear Stearns was rescued. 2008 is a different political environment than 1975, but then again, the public has extremely negative feelings about government. Anti-government rhetoric from the left could be wrapped around conservative policy yet again.