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 | Monday, October 13, 2008 at 12:36:38 mst
Comment ID: #1
Name: Tony Donadio
E-mail: tdonadio(at)optonline.net
"These rights-violating controls do not make the economy "regular;" they make it irregular and chaotic. For example, the federal controls that forced lenders to make risky loans are "regulations" of this sort."
Perhaps we could draw the distinction by facetiously calling them "irregulations?"
Seriously, I think Ari has a point here. We're fighting a package deal that packages legitimate government oversight (for example, to prevent fraud, and in general to protect individual rights) with government controls that violate rights. The only way to fight a package-deal is to re-draw the conceptual lines in terms of essential issues (which in this case I agree is the issue of rights). |
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| Monday, October 13, 2008 at 18:43:28 mst
Comment ID: #2
Name: Alfred Centauri
E-mail: alfredcentauri(at)bellsouth.net
A comment I left elsewhere that seems appropriate here:
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The problem, as I see it, is the idea of equating ‘deregulation’ with ‘freeing the market’. Nothing could be further from the truth.
‘Freeing’ the market requires *revoking* the power of the government to intervene in the market. No mandates, no bailouts, no GSEs, no subsidies, no tariffs, etc.
However, ‘freeing’ the market does *not* require that the government look the other way and allow a free-for-all, wild wild west market where anything goes.
Rather, for any approximation of the free market to exist at all, the government must aggressively police the market in order to discourage fraud and/or coercion. A market is not free to the extent that fraud and coercion exist.
It appears to me that deregulation is in fact precisely the opposite of ‘freeing’ the market. In this latest debacle, the governments action to mandate the origination of loans that no rational agent would make otherwise, coupled with the government’s abdication of it’s role to police the market for these loans, run counter to the most fundamental free market principles.
IMHO.
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| Monday, October 13, 2008 at 20:56:23 mst
Comment ID: #3
Name: Jeff Montgomery
URL: http://funwithgravity.blogspot.com/
I've pondered on the same thing.
I've pretty much given up on the term "regulation" in many discussions, unless the context clearly indicates that I mean "laws that prevent voluntary action", or unless the audience understands it that way. Its meaning is too ambiguous to be useful when addressing the general public. It's often used as a synonym for "law", which causes listeners to think that lack of regulation = anarchy, which does not help at all.
Unless or until I can find a way to use the term effectively, I will use "laws that violate individual rights" or "laws that prevent peaceful voluntary interaction". That's a mouthful, so I usually establish the meaning in steps. If only I spoke German, I might come up with one nice long word to describe it ;).
If I think of a solution -- or a German word -- I'll blog on it. |
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| Monday, October 13, 2008 at 23:01:03 mst
Comment ID: #4
Name: Jim May
E-mail: seerak(at)gmail.com
This is an interesting take on turning the concept of "regulation" on its head. However, I seem to recall, from sources long faded in time, that the concept of "regulation", in the beginnings of the first movements to expand government control, was clearly understood as being distinct from the protection of individual rights -- that the latter is only "reactive", while regulations were something else -- i.e. that they are proactive, that they are preventive law.
I do not know whether we've gone far enough for that distinction to have faded into irrelevance -- as Jeff notes above, I certainly do believe that this is the case for most people. I routinely have to make the distinction between the government's police power and its regulatory power when explaining my ideas. Most people take the idea of "de-regulation" or of abolishing regulation as a promotion of anarchy. For such people, Ari's approach could work.
But for anyone who is knowledgeabout about the history of regulatory law, including an understanding of the "preventive" nature of regulation, would likely construe that use of "regulation" to misconstrue us as middle-of-the-roaders, if we haven't made ourselves clear otherwise.
Myself, I'd rather characterize regulation for what it is -- prior restraint. |
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