Madison’s Vision: Government to Fight Factions

The Hidden History of Monopolies: How Big Business Destroyed the American Dream

How Big Business conquered America. Over the next few months the entire book will be here, new chapters posted every Sunday, for subscribers to read at no cost. If you want to get a physical book to mark up or share with others, just click on the picture above, visit your local bookstore, or check your favorite online seller.

Madison’s Vision: Government to Fight Factions

Government is the agency that we collectively create (at least we do in a democratic republic) to manage the natural monopolies that we all use, share, and/or need: the atmosphere, water and waterways, septic and waste, public roads and skyways, police and fire, and, most broadly, the entire infrastructure of commerce and the public good.

The whole idea of government grew out of ancient families, tribes, and clans, who worked together to protect the youngest, eldest, and weakest members of then-hunter-gatherer communities.

Particularly since the agricultural revolution, what we call government has often been twisted and manipulated by the very wealthy (kings/empires/fascism/feudalism/etc.), but its core functions when it works best are still found in the Preamble to the US Constitution: to provide for justice, defense, tranquility, liberty, and the general welfare of the people.

If any one faction—to use Madison’s word from Federalist, no. 10, to describe people who would put their own interest above those of their fellow citizens—were to rise up and dominate a government, the republic would inevitably be weakened.

Madison wrote, “By a faction, I understand a number of citizens . . . who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adversed [opposed] to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community”10

Madison’s idea was that the core function of government was to fight factions, as he laid out in both Federalist, no. 10, and many of his commentaries on the Constitution. In this regard, there was virtual unanimity among the Founders and the Framers of the Constitution.

They’d fought a war of independence against a government that was in cahoots with the world’s largest corporation and had no intention of letting such a monopoly happen again on these shores, as documented earlier. Only government, they knew, had the power—essentially, the police power and rulemaking power—to defy the economic elite.

The monopolists know this truth as well. If government were directly responsible and responsive to The People, it wouldn’t dance exclusively to the tune of the very largest corporations. But if the monopolists could convince The People that the government was their enemy, then they would be able to wrest control away from The People. More on that in the chapter “How the Monopolists Stole the US Government.”