You Say Capitalism, I say Tribalism

What the Big Government/Big Business Debate Is Leaving Out

Four years ago I packed up my apartment in Boston and headed south. I was moving to Baton Rouge to become an English Lecturer at Louisiana State University. The shift was shocking for many reasons, but one that felt especially major was that I’d left a hyper-blue state for one of the reddest of the red. This became vividly clear during the feverish months leading up to the 2012 presidential election, when I found the struggle between “the government and the free market” debated endlessly in the research papers of my students. Topics like the auto bailout and Obamacare were particularly popular. Judging from my classes, the concept of the free market is very attractive in Louisiana, a fact that has been echoed by our governor, Bobby Jindal, during his recent effort to gain prominence as a GOP presidential hopeful. In a speech at the winter republican convention, for example, he remarked, “By obsessing with zeroes on the budget spreadsheet, we send a not-so-subtle signal that the focus of our country is on the phony economy of Washington — instead of the real economy out here in Charlotte, and Shreveport, and Cheyenne.” He has the same basic idea as my students: Government is dead weight — something that stifles choice and absorbs your money for no good reason.

This point of view makes perfect sense in Louisiana. There’s a long history of government corruption here. Why would anyone trust it with more power than necessary? Still, despite its insistence on free market principles, Louisiana hasn’t yet been transformed into a beacon of capitalist efficiency and prosperity. Although there’s little government regulation here, good jobs aren’t widely available. In fact, according to the Census Bureau, the poverty rate is the second highest in the country. So in many ways the private sector isn’t addressing Louisiana’s problems either.

Since most publicly available systems (corporate and government) don’t work very well, Louisianans have proudly come to rely on each other instead. If you want to get something done, the best thing to do is call a friend or family member to help. It’s not the public sector or the private sector that matters. It’s “the kinship sector.” As a result, the national debate about big government vs. big business doesn’t actually correspond to the way Louisianans live.

Let me share some examples.

After scoping out Craigslist classifieds, my fiancée and I bought some furniture from an elderly couple a few miles away from us. After visiting them to pay for it, we said we’d have to come back a few days later with a rented U-haul to move it. This solution seemed natural to us. But the couple was somewhat flabbergasted by the suggestion.

“Well doesn’t he have a truck?” the woman asked my fiancée, pointing to me.

No, I didn’t.

“Well doesn’t he have a friend that has a truck?”

No, I didn’t have that either.

The woman suggested she could have her son drive from an hour away to help us. But we insisted — stunned by her generosity — that renting a U-haul was fine.

Instances like this are common. Once while I was traveling, my fiancée called the police after a shirtless drunk showed up on our porch, asking for money. The officer’s reaction? “Well,” he said. “Where’s your husband?” When she told him she wasn’t married yet, he said: “Well, how about your brothers then?” Some weeks later, during an LSU football game, I encountered a few Tiger fans driving around near campus, searching for parking. They asked me if I knew where they could find some, and when we looked around us it was clear that plenty of people were parking on the lawns of nearby houses. The fact was obvious: if you knew somebody that would let you do that, you were good. If not, no parking for you.

So when people in Louisiana call for the free market, it’s only partly about the growth of business. It’s also about resistance to the government meddling with the tribal way things have always been done. For those that have grown up here (with significant kinship networks), the system works. So why would they want to change anything?

How much Bobby Jindal understands this fact, I’m not sure. For example, it’s ironic that in his winter convention speech he says, “America is not much about government at all. In America, government is one of those things you have to have, but you sure don’t want too much of it… kind of like your in-laws.” However, the fact is that in Louisiana you rely on people like your in-laws (not to mention cousins and college buddies and fellow church members). It’s been this way for a long time. And I don’t think it will change any time soon.