Regulation & The Free Market

Henrin said:

That is just a way to control the entire industry that might not be even causing harm. Any just system only goes after those who cause harm.

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It certainly can be abused I agree (but then again, so can courts), but as of right now, there is no data to show this is case in most situations.

obvious Child said:

A sustainable free market has/requires no regulation.

Agree or disagree?

Considering the influx of new blood with the up coming election, I'm curious to see where we stand as a forum on this.

FYI: This poll is public. So we can see if some immature prick is spamming. Now, if we could only get the mods to release IP logs....

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A free market is NOT sustainable without regulation. For example, without regulation monopolies would form and take over large sectors of the economy. There would then be essentially nothing stopping them from creating "regulations" of their own to ensure that no competitors could form. And that would be far from a free market.

Kandahar said:

A free market is NOT sustainable without regulation. For example, without regulation monopolies would form and take over large sectors of the economy. There would then be essentially nothing stopping them from creating "regulations" of their own to ensure that no competitors could form. And that would be far from a free market.

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it's the same reason anarchy doesn't work as a political system. the end result is warlords who act as regional dictators.

Kandahar said:

A free market is NOT sustainable without regulation. For example, without regulation monopolies would form and take over large sectors of the economy. There would then be essentially nothing stopping them from creating "regulations" of their own to ensure that no competitors could form. And that would be far from a free market.

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The mistake people make that don't understand the free market is thinking monopolies are part it.

All anyone has to do is go read about the sweatshops, that worked wives daughters and sisters 18 hrs a day for peanuts and abused them relentlessly or employers that worked 13 yr olds in incredibly dangerous work enviroments...with workers dieing in fires and jumping out of 6 story buildings. Read about employers hiring thugs to keep employees in line with beatings and MURDERS...after that its very easy to understand why we need OASHA and a structure to oversee business...theres actually some individuals on this forum who act like there are no lowlife scumbag businessman....I have to chuckle sometimes at the naivette or the disengenuousness.

megaprogman said:

It certainly can be abused I agree (but then again, so can courts), but as of right now, there is no data to show this is case in most situations.

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In most cases it very much does do exactly that. If there is an instance of something happening with your food for example with one company every part of the industry is punished. This is really the regular practice of the government these days.

Henrin said:

The mistake people make that don't understand the free market is thinking monopolies are part it.

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I agree, monopolies are NOT part of a free market, since a free market is primarily about competition. But they ARE part of a laissez-faire system where there is no regulation. You can have a free market, or you can have a total lack of government intervention in the market, but you can't have both.

lpast said:

All anyone has to do is go read about the sweatshops, that worked wives daughters and sisters 18 hrs a day for peanuts and abused them relentlessly or employers that worked 13 yr olds in incredibly dangerous work enviroments...with workers dieing in fires and jumping out of 6 story buildings.

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This is actually wrong. Markets the people are part of and they decide on what they want to work for by using that market. If they don't for whatever reason they will not earn high wages only because they have decided not to. Dangerous environments on the other hand can be handled in my system in two ways, one the market, and two the courts. You can decide and both should work fine.

As for children working in the old days, this was culturally acceptable and something that low wage families needed(and frankly still need) to move ahead in the world. By the time it was against the law it no longer was. Making the law itself pointless.

Read about employers hiring thugs to keep employees in line with beatings and MURDERS...after that its very easy to understand why we need OASHA and a structure to oversee business...theres actually some individuals on this forum who act like there are no lowlife scumbag businessman....I have to chuckle sometimes at the naivette or the disengenuousness.

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Wanting courts to handle these kind of cases is not saying anything of the sort. Its actually accepting this reality and putting up a solution that offers the workers a way to deal with it.

Henrin said:

In most cases it very much does do exactly that. If there is an instance of something happening with your food for example with one company every part of the industry is punished. This is really the regular practice of the government these days.

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And what is wrong with that? The name of the game is consumer protection, right?

Kandahar said:

I agree, monopolies are NOT part of a free market, since a free market is primarily about competition. But they ARE part of a laissez-faire system where there is no regulation. You can have a free market, or you can have a total lack of government intervention in the market, but you can't have both.

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This problem is not a laissez-faire problem but actually a problem caused by the reverse. Monopolies are created by protections that make competition close to impossible in many fields. Without them this problem doesn't exist.

megaprogman said:

And what is wrong with that? The name of the game is consumer protection, right?

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No. Its to punish people that violate the rights of others while not punishing the people that don't.

Henrin said:

No. Its to punish people that violate the rights of others while not punishing the people that don't.

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I disagree, the purpose should be protection of the consumer due to the power differential between most individuals and large companies. It gives regular people a voice where they otherwise would not have one.

Under most conditions regulations should disincentivize abusing others.
Sure it's all how you define abuse, that's what we do though, make big-boy decisions about what's abuse and what's not abuse. Most lay people can figure out the difference.

Henrin said:

one the market, and two the courts.

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Regarding courts handling it, that's absurd. I don't want to sue AFTER I get cancer from a known carcinogen being hidden away in my shower gel. Certain things are priceless, a law suit can't give you back your child, your health, your life, etc. Get a clue please. Legal should be a last resort. That's when all other negotations and avenues have failed. Thankfully, because it's extraordinarily inefficient to boot (court).

megaprogman said:

I disagree, the purpose should be protection of the consumer due to the power differential between most individuals and large companies. It gives regular people a voice where they otherwise would not have one.

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Thats only half of it. Think ethically. It's to protect everyone from abuses. That goes for big corporations that employ you then screw you over (enron) and to the unemployed ****-head that tries to sue the corporation for $4M because of their own stupidity.

megaprogman said:

I disagree, the purpose should be protection of the consumer due to the power differential between most individuals and large companies. It gives regular people a voice where they otherwise would not have one.

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The goal is merely to decide on individual violations of individuals to protect everyones rights in the process. If you allow the courts or regulations to just punish people that aren't involved that doesn't serve to protect rights. It should be out to treats people as people, and business as business. Everyone deserves rights in the process.

Henrin said:

The goal is merely to decide on individual violations of individuals to protect everyones rights in the process. If you allow the courts or regulations to just punish people that aren't involved that doesn't serve to protect rights. It should be out to treats people as people, and business as business. Everyone deserves rights in the process.

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I disagree again. Because businesses have much more power than an individual, they can cause much more harm with simple decisions than your or I can, thus they need some blunting.

Mach said:

Regarding courts handling it, that's absurd. I don't want to sue AFTER I get cancer from a known carcinogen being hidden away in my shower gel. Certain things are priceless, a law suit can't give you back your child, your health, your life, etc. Get a clue please. Legal should be a last resort. That's when all other negotations and avenues have failed. Thankfully, because it's extraordinarily inefficient to boot (court).

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This argument is the same argument people use to ban all sorts of things that may or not harm people. I don't agree.

megaprogman said:

I disagree again. Because businesses have much more power than an individual, they can cause much more harm with simple decisions than your or I can, thus they need some blunting.

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Again, conversely causing harm to a business, causes harm to far more people down the economic chain.
I can assure you if one person gets fired wrongly, the impact to others is trivial.
If you shut down an entire company, the impact is far more widespread an damaging...for example.

You can offer more financial support and expertise to the little guy than to the big guy, that's fine. But you can't lose sight that both must be treated fairly..for the greater good

Henrin said:

This argument is the same argument people use to ban all sorts of things that may or not harm people. I don't agree.

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So you would prefer to get cancer THEN sue, rather than have at least some firewall in place to limit carcinogens in your food, water, products. Good luck with that.

Henrin said:

This problem is not a laissez-faire problem but actually a problem caused by the reverse. Monopolies are created by protections that make competition close to impossible in many fields. Without them this problem doesn't exist.

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Not necessarily. Suppose that there are ten large widget factories in a laissez-faire economy. If one of them gains an edge over its competitors for whatever reason (say, it produces superior widgets at a cheaper price at some key point in time), what is to stop them from buying out the weakest players and consolidating its hold over the market? What is to stop them from then focusing on destroying the competition, rather than continuing to produce superior widgets at a cheaper price? If some upstart widget factory comes along, the incumbent can just set up shop next door and temporarily sell his products at a loss until the insurgent waves the white flag of surrender. And if he already has a dominating position in the widget supply chain, he can tell his distributors that they aren't allowed to work with the insurgent company. If there's no government to deem this as an unfair trade practice, he certainly would.

Mach said:

So you would prefer to get cancer THEN sue, rather than have at least some firewall in place to limit carcinogens in your food, water, products. Good luck with that.

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Who would knowingly continue the same process after they got sued for a few times with the punishments growing everytime it happens? Would you?

Henrin said:

Who would knowingly continue the same process after they got sued for a few times with the punishments growing everytime it happens? Would you?

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It depends on a cost benefit analysis. Would a car company fix a brake issue if potential lawsuit costs are less than the cost of a recall?

This thread is sorta useless...

Laws = Civilized Society
No Laws = Anarchy

'nuff said...

megaprogman said:

It depends on a cost benefit analysis. Would a car company fix a brake issue if potential lawsuit costs are less than the cost of a recall?

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Why wouldn't that be taken into account on the very first time it happened?

And really for Mach's example the person really has to be out to kill people to continue to do it.

As a former smoker, I always think of tobacco companies when I think about regulation. Their story shows the failings of both sides of the regulatory environment:

First, tobacco companies boosted their products addictive qualities -- going as far as to pump extra nicotine in -- and then covered up or just plain-old lied about the relationship to cancer. The market incentivized this behavior -- as long as the companies could avoid the consequences of the harm their products were causing, they stood to gain more profit. Without the power of government to investigate, cast light on and punish these practices, they might be going on today.

But then there's the flip side: regulation has driven up the cost of a pack of cigarettes to the point where many smokers -- addicted to these cancer-causing products -- are spending way more than they can afford to maintain the habit. Meanwhile, several states sued over the cost of treating sick smokers and won a massive settlement. I live in Ohio -- guess how much of that settlement money goes to help sick smokers or to quitting programs? None, because the state sold the settlement annuity (a la J.G. Wentworth) and used the proceeds to plug a budget gap. Meanwhile, smokers who haven't yet found the strength to quit (it's not easy -- I've done it) pay more and get sicker. Now we want to put pictures of lung tumors on cigarette packs. To me, that's pointless and a waste of resources.

So smokers get the "trickle-down" from both sides.

The lesson is that regulation is absolutely necessary but must be applied with restraint and wisdom to be effective. But that's very difficult to achieve in our system of government.