The Reedy Creek district and its attendant privileges are not the product of the invisible hand of market forces.
In an editorial for Reason magazine, Mike Pence pretends to make the case for the free market. The heart of it includes a critique of Governor Ron DeSantis. Here is the relevant portion:
After Bud Light drew controversy for embracing progressive gender politics, sales plummeted nationwide. In recent weeks, the same thing has happened to Target for similar reasons. Shares of both companies have suffered substantial losses. Without government lifting a finger, woke companies are being called to account for their ideological excesses.
Another prominent example is Disney, a company that trumpeted its left-wing values by condemning conservative education and parental rights reforms in Florida. Governors around the country are right to pursue these policies and protect our kids. But when the governor of Florida decided to launch a full-scale campaign of governmental retribution against Disney, he wasn’t taking a page out of the conservative playbook — he was following in the footsteps of the radical left. In doing so, he not only risked billions of dollars of investment and thousands of jobs for the state, but even more importantly, he turned his back on the principles that make our country great.
None of this was necessary. The best way to change businesses’ behavior is to hit them where it hurts — the pocketbook. The American people seemingly understand this truth, as evidenced by their grassroots boycotts and changes in purchasing habits.
What Governor DeSantis and the Florida legislature did was change the terms of the Reedy Creek district. This district is a bespoke creation of the legislature itself and therefore has no real connection to pure free-market principles. In fact, one could call the special district a form of Florida’s industrial policy.
One of the reasons Disney got such a favorable set of bespoke regulations is that the company brought certain pro-social, pro-family values to the state. If Sea World decided to reinvent itself as a strip club, the Florida State legislature would have every right to revisit whether Sea World’s special-district privileges were up to date. The Reedy Creek district and its attendant privileges are not the product of the invisible hand of market forces. This can’t be emphasized enough. Mike Pence is counseling us to unprincipled surrender here.
Worse is the logic he employs. He dings DeSantis because he “risked billions of dollars of investment and thousands of jobs for the state.” First of all, this is a lie. Common sense tells us that Disney is not in a position to abandon so many billions of dollars of investment in Florida. Secondly, the consumer-boycott techniques that Pence recommends would carry the exact same risks: Boycotts lead to losses which lead to firings, and firings scare off investment. That’s the point of the boycotts — they want to see malefactors restrained or fired, they want to see companies that insist on offending them go broke, and investment to go elsewhere.
One of the biggest problems facing the right is this daft tendency to look at the results produced by a system of corporate welfare, regulatory privileges, log-rolling, and state industrial policy, and throw up our hands and say, “Hey, this is just the free market at work. Government can’t do anything here.” It’s not just politically disadvantageous, it’s a lie.