To Regulate or Not to Regulate…
Posted by: Tiffany
This morning while I was getting ready for work, I heard a gentleman on the news stating that our current financial meltdown is a result of TOO MUCH regulation. Many of the economists who have spoken out recently have blamed the deregulation for the current meltdown. Obviously, having a feeling about the cause of the crisis will directly lead to your feelings on how to solve the problem and keep it from happening again. If you believe that regulations caused the problem, then clearly the solution is deregulation. And if you believe that the problem was caused by deregulation and lax enforcement of existing regulation, then you will probably be looking for more regulation and stronger punishment for those who try to circumvent the existing regulations.
Let’s try to put this into perspective. Suppose you have a 16-year old daughter. Her grades have started to slip, and she has started sneaking out and breaking rules you have set for her. What would your solution be for fixing the problem? Would you say to her “well, honey, clearly these rules have been holding you back. You now have no rules at all. Regulate yourself.” And then hope that a 16-year old would have enough forethought to realize that cutting class and having unprotected sex and shoplifting would be BAD for her future? Or would you instead give her stronger rules and harsher punishment? Would you take away her cell phone and her car, talk to her teachers, start checking her homework and batten down the hatches?
People may say this is a ridiculous analogy, that the banking and mortgage industries are not as erratic as 16-year olds. But I would beg to differ. Both are ignoring the big picture and the long-term effects of their actions, taking big risks for short-term payoffs and ignoring the effects that their mistakes of today will have on tomorrow.
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See, Tiffany, the problem is you’re using logical argumentation about the situation and the Free Market Fairies don’t like that. The way it works is you deregulate everything and then the Fairies fart their Magic Trickle Down Capitalism Dust over the land and makes everyone happy.
When that doesn’t work we just bail out the rich bastards who stole all the money and blame black people and single mothers for everything.
Don’t you see??!?