The Glade 4.0

Just like a lazy damn liberal to show up at 9AM to work.

And for 3 bucks a month you can subscribe to consumer reports which researches and presents it for you - ahhh the market

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

Consumer Reports primarily has detailed information on used products. The information they have on brand new products is fairly limited. And they don't report on everything.

I for one, would not want to rely on Consumer Reports to ensure that the products I was using were at some minimum level of safety.

Consumer reports primarily has detailed information on used products because that's what the demand for detailed information is directed at in the present environment.

Deregulate a lot of stuff towards a freed market, and you'd see that demand shift, and Consumer Reports (and likely other publications like it) would shift their focus accordingly to fill the demand.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

I'm always amazed that the folks who distrust government so much are happy to trust a corporation.

Corporations have competition to keep them honest. When was the last time you saw somebody compete with Government?

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

I don't trust either. I just know corporations are at the mercy of my money. We're at the mercy of the government taking our money.

Corporations are at the mercy of your money, which only matters if you are smart enough to know they are fleecing you and you are able to convince enough other people to change their behavior. With the government, you can directly affect it's outcome depending on how involved you want to get.

I have not noticed that competition or money have made corporations in general behave significantly better than the government. We're far better off with a combination of government oversight and free market oversight with things like Consumer reports than we would be with either one.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

There is no longer a delineation between big government and big corporations. They have too many common interests, and neither should be trusted.

Am I the only one who notices that incorporation requires government - without that they are simply businesses with individuals civilly liable.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

No. You aren't.

You might be the only one left who is patient enough to say it though.

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

It is ridiculously difficult to start a business without incorporation. You'll lose everything you have if the business fails as debt collectors can go after stuff you didn't invest in the business.

So lets paddle further up the river. Does anyone feel that the protections afforded businesses lead them to take risks that they wouldn't otherwise? Are the gains of those risks worth the drawbacks? How about the current climate of protections/regulations? Are the moral/ethical hazards that some claim corporations take a result of the framework they are in, or are corporations being held from pillaging by that legal structure? When I think of deregulating I don't just see the removal of restrictions, I see the removal of special protection as well. I want a true equal field, not the seperate but equal we have now.

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A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. ~ John Stuart Mill

Out current level of incorporation regarding its scope (duration and area) and the degree of protections have all increased. We could retreat these advances in scope or one law recognizing any business as independent from its owners and operators would serve the same protections on private holdings - though I do think the immunity does allow more risk taking.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

This.

Bad businesses eventually go out of business if not enough people buy their product or service. I don't have to convince people of that. Businesses don't always suffer right away. In fact, sometimes never. But in the long term when business starts declining, their will be a reason why. If not, then people deserve what they get or they feel they're getting a valuable service in some way. It doesn't mean you have to use that business' product or service though.


Interesting. Name one business that's not regulated by the government in some way? Funny, businesses still behave badly and have government backing to do so. It doesn't have to behave significantly better than government because if people catch on then said business doesn't exist long, unless they're using some criminal means. Then government has a right to step in and prosecute since it's illegal and violating rights.

It's weird. Regulations are usually in response to some problem, so there is typically a before and after that can be compared. I don't see how folks can do a before and after comparison for some things, and still come up with a regulation-is-not-needed opinion.

Well, generally, there's a chain of effects and events related to regulation that go well beyond the scope of fixing the "problem". These effects and events generally introduce new problems or difficulties into situations seemingly unrelated to the problem we were fixing in the first place.

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First, you used the word usually. So it's not always. Sometimes it's just the government meddling in private business affairs. A perfect example would be healthcare. It's essentially a grab by government after government created the regulations that failed to work. Second, most of the problems regulations "fix" then cause other problems as Khross mentions. Let's use an example. When the FDIC was created, it was in response to the fact that a lot of people lost a lot of money by putting money in banks after they went bankrupt and couldn't pay their debts. So FDR and Congress came up an idea to create a federal entity that would ensure that people would get money back by creating a reserve member banks would pay into. Great "fix" right!? People would invest money with banks after the Great Depression again because there's insurance in play now. Unfortunately, many banks have a hard time meeting the reserve requirements, forcing some to go under and forcing new banks to never come into existence, thus limiting competition. These favored few banks start to merge because it's easier to run the business as a bigger entity responding to regulation rather than a small company. As new banks emerge, they get swallowed up pretty fast now because these bigger banks can absorb the regulatory costs much more readily. Thus, a new problem was created. Banks that become "too big too fail" because they have so many assets of many different people and companies in their bank. See the pharmaceutical industry for another perfect example of regulatory influence.

I'm not saying there's no such thing as good regulation, but you better think of all of the effects of regulation before you pass them as law. In addition, trying to fix regulatory problems with more regulation is just asinine. It's like trying to fix the foundation of the house by patching the outside with caulk when there's a fundamental break in the foundation itself.

Khross: Without a doubt. That doesn't necessary mean we should do away with the regs. Perhaps they need to be revised. It will always be adjusting, in my mind. The delicate balance between too much and too little regulation.



No argument there.



Absolutely. However, healthcare is such a behemoth I don't doubt for a second that there is some Fed up practice that's going on that needs to be stamped out by the gov. That doesn't mean they need to take it over, though.



Should, but let's be realistic - can't. Do the best you can, and when you find unintended consequences, fix them.



I don't doubt that there are exceptions to this, but in general, I agree. One big example is:

"people aren't able to get insurance because of prexisting conditions!"
"that's messed up, let's require insurance companies to take them."
"now nobody's buying insurance."
"let's mandate it."
"people are pissed off."
"let's use our new health care authority to put Zoloft in the water supply."
"hooray, everyone's happy. problem solved!"