We’re big fans at the CEA of the work done by Matt Kibbe, Terry Kibbe and the rest of the Free the People team to advance the values of “freedom, entrepreneurship, individual responsibility, choice, and peaceful cooperation.”
We share those values, which made Free the People a great place for CEA President John C. Mozena to share a blog post warning of the dangers to liberty and free markets posed by America’s massive crony capitalist economic development industry:
With this powerful and well-funded big business/big government chorus all singing from the same central planning hymnal, it’s hard to blame the average American for believing that if a city or state doesn’t hand out the biggest and best subsidies and give government officials increasingly unilateral powers to “develop” the economy, then all the jobs will go someplace else. That’s a terribly dangerous mindset to have local governments and local businesses doing their best to promote, and it’s only getting worse as these programs grow larger, louder, and more lavishly funded.
It’s long past time for defenders of limited government and free markets to take this threat seriously.