Skepticism Is Warranted in Sen. Warren’s Anti-Business Appeal to Conservatives

January 17, 2025

In The Odyssey the witch Circe warns Odysseus what is ahead on his journey home – the Sirens who drive men mad and cause them founder on their shoals, “a great heap of dead men’s bones lying all around, the flesh still rotting off of them.” If Odysseus still insists on hearing the sweet song of the Sirens, Circe tells him to make sure his men have wax in their ears but for the gods’ sake, have those men lash you tightly to the mast! 

It is in this light that I read Elizabeth Warren’s appeal to Republicans to join her to “lower costs, advance security and cut red tape.” I didn’t strap myself to my chair, but I had my beloved retriever Lucy on hand to snap at me if I made a lunge for the keyboard to sign up.

I admit, Sen. Warren penned a persuasive piece, well-tuned to conservative ears and placed in enemy territory no less – the op-ed page of The Wall Street Journal. The Massachusetts senator wants to revive President Trump’s first-term proposal to cap credit card rates at 10 percent and invites him to support the work of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. She wants to work with Republicans to end bank mergers and claw-back payouts for executives of big banks that failed.

There is a lot for Republicans to parse here and perhaps a kernel of interest here and there that might make for cooperation. But in the spirit of Circe, I would advise any Republican Member of Congress to stop the ears of your staffers with wax.

Consider Sen. Warren’s offer to work with Republicans to establish “common-sense rules for artificial intelligence, blockchain technology and fintech …” There are as of yet no obvious common-sense rules for artificial intelligence and blockchain because these are still nascent technologies with operations, potentials, and impacts we cannot yet fully predict. Example: Is it “common sense” to impose hard-and-fast copyright rules regarding AI’s expropriation and blenderization of written and artistic material? A good case can be made that this is so. But then, such a hard rule could bring the development of much of artificial intelligence to a screeching halt, handing the initiative to China. Sen. Warren’s propositions are all simple and commonsensical-sounding, but they conceal a lot. 

For most Americans, there is no love lost for business elites who have frequently been tone-deaf. But the Warren narrative that all evil stems from business is populism at its worst. Republicans should beware of this siren song of reflexive anti-business populism lest they unwittingly find themselves supporting rules – especially in the realm of antitrust – that are anti-capitalist and harmful to consumers and the free market.

There … ocean open at last. Down Lucy. We can relax now.