Why do libertarians hate America

Harold Meyerson has a characteristically provocative op-ed in the Post today about the confused state of affairs that allows foreign governments to invest in or buy American companies, but precludes the American government from doing the same:

To be sure, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States has the power to nix such purchases if they compromise national security. But what is the proper response of laissez-faire advocates to this sudden wave of foreign government investment in non-security-related companies? It's okay if the Chinese government owns a slice of our economy but not okay if our own government does? We trust every other government more than we trust our own?

I posed this question to William Niskanen, chairman of the libertarian Cato Institute and among the most principled ideologues on our political landscape. Foreign government ownership, he argued, shouldn't pose a problem unless that government obtains a controlling interest. When I then asked whether it would be a problem for the U.S. government to buy into such a company, he answered immediately, "I don't think I would want to be a shareholder in a company in which the U.S. government owned a good bit of the shares," and then, pausing, continued, "I haven't thought about this" -- "this" being the distinction between U.S. ownership and, say, Chinese.

I'm sure there's some sort of hand-wavy answer to this double standard: That the U.S. government is different from foreign governments because it passes laws that American citizens are compelled to follow and if they invest in American businesses, they'll pass laws designed to benefit government coffers. That this is a step toward running our economy the way the Italian Fascists ran theirs. That it's the short road to serfdom! I don't think this is an entirely invalid critique. I also think, though, that this is basically the way the U.S. government already operates.

I'm basically thinking out loud, but here goes. The U.S. government has nationalized a lot of things that we take for granted and we tend to like those things. I can probably imagine a few other industries that would best be run publicly, too--health care and wifi are two obvious ones. But what if, for the vast majority of industries, the situation was different. If we were to forever put to rest the current influence peddling system, couldn't we replace it with one in which the government invested in private firms--firms that operate for profit, without subsidies--so that, at the very least, the returns could be reinvested in the commons? If done correctly, this would be, it seems to me, a major improvement on the status quo system wherein business guides governance by legally bribing elected officials.

Anyhow. Read Harold's op-ed.