What Does Ralph Nader Really Want?

It’s hard not to admire Ralph Nader, but it is sometimes even harder to understand him. In the early Sixties, Nader was writing for such conservative journals as The Freeman and Reader’s Digest. He still, occasionally, comes up with marvelous remarks like “there are too many government controls over the market mechanism.”

On the other hand, Nader thinks that companies guilty of pollution or contamination should be declared “socially bankrupt” and “thrown into receivership”—which sounds rather like expropriation. Nader also wants “a formal mechanism by which workers can have substantial participation in running the company”—which sounds like syndicalism. He promises that the U.S. “will see consumer demonstrations some day that will make the civil rights demonstrations look small by comparison,” and he has urged “basic revision of the whole distribution system and income system.”

About the Author

Alan Reynolds

Alan Reynolds, National Review’s economics editor from 1972 to 1976, is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and the author of Income and Wealth.

It’s hard not to admire Ralph Nader, but it is sometimes even harder to understand him. In the early Sixties, Nader was writing for such conservative journals as The Freeman and Reader’s Digest. He still, occasionally, comes up with marvelous remarks like “there are too many government controls over the market mechanism.”

On the other hand, Nader thinks that companies guilty of pollution or contamination should be declared “socially bankrupt” and “thrown into receivership”—which sounds rather like expropriation. Nader also wants “a formal mechanism by which workers can have substantial participation in running the company”—which sounds like syndicalism. He promises that the U.S. “will see consumer demonstrations some day that will make the civil rights demonstrations look small by comparison,” and he has urged “basic revision of the whole distribution system and income system.”