There is a large difference between government support for Big Business, and government support for free market capitalism, even though the two are often conflated by both the political left and right (though for vastly different reasons). Giving what amounts to large cash giveaways or writing functionally company-specific regulations on an ad hoc basis is a bad approach. It invites corruption, undermines citizen faith in what should be the even-handedness of government, and stifles competition. Whatever short term gains come from such arrangements, they are not, in the end, sustainable. In the long term, they are an obstacle to true prosperity, innovation, or economic diversity.

While I admired (and continue to admire) Gov. Brian Sandoval very much, I always thought his economic development approach was counter-productive in the long term. It was like paying people to be your friends – you might be surrounded by lots of folks, but you aren’t exactly making deep connections most of the time that way. There has undeniably been a short-term boost, and there is a very good argument that we needed that boost after the Great Recession. But now we’re also having to deal with the real costs of these selective government-business partnerships. Nevadans are right to wonder if it was worth the costs we’ve borne, and very correct to be skeptical about any cost-benefit going forward from here.

Instead, I’ve long argued that what Nevada ought to do is keep taxes low, limit regulations, and keep the doors equally open and inviting to any business large or small, native or imported, who wants to set up shop in our state. Government should not be hand-selecting businesses for special treatment.

And so I was – mostly – encouraged by Governor Sisolak’s recent announcement that we are going to be rethinking the current tax abatement model which essentially pays out-of-state companies to come to Nevada. Like his comments about gun control that I wrote about last week, Sisolak is demonstrating that he’s no foam-at-the-mouth socialist and is willing to be open-minded and solution-oriented.

But he’s also undeniably a man of the political left. And while I think he recognizes many of the problems with his predecessor’s approach, the “solutions” he’s toying with will lead him into the same trap. By attempting to dictate the types of companies who come to Nevada, and the manner in which they conduct their business, he’s still putting his government in charge of picking (and predicting) winners and losers, something government is decidedly bad at doing.

For example, Michael Brown, Sisolak’s new director of the Governor’s Office of Economic Development (GEOD), has said he wants to focus on “workforce development” of various companies, small business owned by women and/or minorities, and higher average wages to ensure we aren’t importing welfare cases.

That all sounds good in theory, but what does that look like in practice? Will Mr. Brown or one of his employees go conduct an audit to ensure the “correct” people are being promoted, even if the owners of those businesses disagree? Will companies front load themselves with a bunch of redundant managers to mess with the math on the wage requirements? Will they make hiring decisions based on demographic data instead of merit, as a sort of condescendingly racist window dressing to mollify the wokest political activists? The governor has already promised more aggressive auditing to ensure Nevada is seeing the return on investment that was originally promised.

No matter how well intentioned, you still have government bureaucrats coming into a private business and pulling hard on all the strings attached to the initial financial incentives. Once can see agents of the government (who will of course know better how businesses should be run than the business owners themselves) that they are altering their deals, and the owners should pray the deals aren’t altered further…

But even with the best of intentions and the most noble of bureaucrats, you still have certain companies being treated differently than others, based on who can best appease a government committee. Even if the outcome is marginally “better” from a cost-benefit standpoint, you still have the risks (or the unseemly appearance) of corruption, and the perception (and perhaps the reality) that the politically well-connected are treated differently than another company which is otherwise similarly situated. And that will, just as before, stifle other innovators, depress competition, and ultimately restrict long-term, healthy economic growth. Not only that, but companies who believe their loss of freedom wasn’t worth their initial tax abatements won’t stick around, leaving behind many of the costs without any of the benefits at all.

We’ve already seen a lot of this play out with our arbitrarily selective approach to marijuana companies and their regulation. It is foolhardy to expand those mistakes to our wider economy.

The role of government is not to pick winner and losers, but to keep the playing field as even as possible for everyone. Keep taxes and (more importantly) regulations as low as possible across the board, and then sell Nevada as what it should be – a land of economic opportunity for anyone willing to put in the work, and not just those who know how to work the strange politics of our state.

Orrin Johnson has been writing and commenting on Nevada and national politics since 2007. He started with an independent blog, First Principles, and was a regular columnist for the Reno Gazette-Journal from 2015-2016. By day, he is a criminal defense attorney in Reno. Follow him on Twitter @orrinjohnson, or contact him at [email protected]