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April 01, 2008
Surely this makes sense...
How about, in the future, we assume that regulations were not created in order to slow industry, but rather to solve real problems. Therefore before we deregulate, we must first ask ourselves A) what problems did the regulations solve, and B) how the new regulations will keep the problem form coming back.
As an example of this: Social Security exists because Americans hated seeing homelessness in literally 50% of our elder population. Today that problem doesn't exist. If anyone wants to change our current system, they need to first satisfy me that we're not going to see a return to the days of elder poverty.
The deregulation of the financial services sector, too should have been more carefully looked at. It's all well and good to look at a motor and say "well, if we remove the safety mechanisms, we can really increase the horsepower on this thing!" But if we've just guaranteed that the engine will explode at some point it's probably not worth it. Republicans and Libertarians always seem convinced that even though we've seen it blow up a dozen times before, this time will be different...
Posted by Andrew at April 1, 2008 09:32 AM