In "Watch Out for GOP Populism" (Jan. 6), Thomas Frank makes a common mistake, but finishes with an apparently unintended truth.
The mistake is his underlying theme that our only real choice is between big business or big government. That false dilemma has been a favorite of politicians and journalists for centuries. The truth is that most innovation, growth, jobs and income spring from a bubbling pot of individuals and small businesses who are free to compete within an innovation-friendly legal structure for the rewards of success. The most effective way to topple greedy, lazy, overconfident big business is competition from small, nimble businesses with new and better products and services.
Conversely, the most effective way to perpetuate big-business greed, laziness, and overconfidence is for government to override the creative destruction process of the competitive business environment by punishing success, discouraging competition, or propping up failed businesses. The evolutionary process of competition-selection-adaptation is not just a biological phenomenon; it works just as powerfully for economies and societies—if only the political class will foster the process instead of hindering it. Order springs from chaos, but only if it's permitted to do so.
I always get a chuckle out of the presumably unintentional irony of those who reject the anti-evolution idea of intelligent design in biology but simultaneously advocate what is in effect intelligent design economics.
Which brings me to Mr. Frank's unintended truth at the end of his article, where he laments that the Democrats' friends in the labor movement, presumably in return for the multimillions they poured into the Democrats' campaign coffers, merely "got a lump of coal." Well, I'd say Mr. Frank is right: Labor's "lump of coal" is a big corporation that was saved by intelligent design economics—General Motors. Or should I say "Government Motors"?
Steve Conover
McKinney, Texas
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 