President Trump is again making headlines for criticizing private companies. This time, he is now going after technology giants like "Google & others"...and from Twitter, ironically.
Google search results for “Trump News” shows only the viewing/reporting of Fake News Media. In other words, they have it RIGGED, for me & others, so that almost all stories & news is BAD. Fake CNN is prominent. Republican/Conservative & Fair Media is shut out. Illegal? 96% of....
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 28, 2018
Trump fires a couple of shots across Google's bow by asking "Illegal?" and, in a follow-up tweet, writing "will be addressed!" These are not idle threats or unhinged internet rants to be written off given that Trump has the full force of the US government at his disposal.
To concentrate on Trump, however, is to miss a fundamental issue. Trump per se isn't the problem. Power is the problem, and years and the chickens we have so carefully raised by weakening constraints on the executive branch are finally coming home to roost. The problem is not that the wrong people wield power but that there is power for the wrong people to wield.
The rule of law is one of the most important guardians of a free and open society. "A government of laws and not of men" is one of our highest principles, and replacing that government of laws with a government of men--like, for example, ambitious, aspiring autocrats and those Adam Smith called the men (and women) "of system" who think themselves fit to arrange others' lives introduces arbitrariness and uncertainty into our day-to-day affairs.
One of my favorite books--indeed, probably my favorite book in the social sciences--is Thomas Sowell's A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles. In it, Sowell discusses how those with what he calls the "unconstrained vision" see themselves fit to spell out in considerable detail what a good society looks like and then make it so given the right amount of power. The good society in this unconstrained vision is simply a matter of political will, whether the goal is to Make America Great Again or implement Change backed by great Hope.
By contrast, those with what Sowell calls the constrained vision emphasize the knowledge-processing and incentive-creating attributes of social processes. They tend not to trust power very much not because they disagree fundamentally with what some want society to look like, ultimately, but because the awesome power to do great good is also the awesome power to do great evil--even if unintentionally.
