PimRoad: Continuation of Twitter Conversation

[PimRoad]

...Because 140 characters aren't enough.

Context:
@PimRoad: @SamThiessen @OccupyChicago Capitalism is not under threat. But the quality of playing-field levelling is. Free markets aren't "free".

@SamThiessen: Wrong! Govt intrusion threatens capitalism more every day. Kills initiative. RT @PimRoad @OccupyChicago Capitalism is not under threat.
@SamThiessen: Everyone free to enter the marketplace with effort and the resources available to them RT @PimRoad @OccupyChicago Free markets aren't "free".
@SamThiessen: Because big govt disrupts inherent fairness of free markets RT @PimRoad @OccupyChicago quality of playing-field levelling is (under threat).

Reply:
You do need to be specific about which regulations are destructive and which are useful.

The Weights and Measures system was put in place in 1901 to regulate the scales that grocery stores were using, because 50% of scales, 20% of weights, 50% of dry measures, and 25% of liquid measures were in significant error in favor of the shopkeepers. It is clearly of benefit to every consumer to have a standardized and calibrated system so you know that a pound is a pound and a gallon is a gallon, rather than paying the per pound rate for 14 ounces, for example. Are these the government mandated and administered regulations that are inhibiting the market?

Restaurants are regulated so that the diners can trust that they won't be poisoned. Indeed, the existence of prepared food regulations leads to an increase in public trust in the eating out sector, that actively promotes that market.

The Clean Air Act was put in place after a hundred years of coal smoke and chemicals belching into the atmosphere, leading to endemic smogs in the cities and high incidence of respiratory ailments. Every city is more pleasant to be in and safe to breathe in now than it was up to the mid-60s. I'm old enough to remember that. I grew up with asthma because I lived downwind from a cement processing plant. They scrub the stuff before it comes out of the stack now.

The Clean Water Act was put in place after the Cuyahoga River spontaneously combusted, and many of the nation's rivers were toxic sludge that fish couldn't live in. I don't imagine the residents of Cleveland want to return to that life.

Of course the costs of doing business would be reduced if all these regulations were repealed. But more grocery buyers would be ripped off, more restaurant customers would be poisoned, more citizens would have respiratory disease and undrinkable water. I don't want to go back there. Do you?

So you really need to be more specific about which regulations are destructive, and make a cast iron case that there will be no downstream public costs as a result of externalizing your business costs.