Quote: A continued onslaught of laws and regulations reduce options and limit freedom. John Stossel discusses the situation with Adam Bellow, editor of "New Threats to Freedom" and Reason's Michael Moynihan
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But the backdrops peel and the sets give way and the cast get eaten by the play, there's a murderer at the matinee, there are dead men in the aisles
And the patrons and the actors too are uncertain if the show is through and with sidelong looks await their cue, but the frozen mask just smiles
Posted: 30 Aug 2010 14:42
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Thats why I want small government and less regulations. They just have way too many to even enforce. Keep laws simple as well as the whole system as much as is humanly possible. __________________
Lucas McCain the Rifleman: A man doesn't run from a fight, Mark...but that doesn't mean you should go running *to* one, either.
Posted: 30 Aug 2010 19:31
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I've made you a libertarian.
Victory!
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But the backdrops peel and the sets give way and the cast get eaten by the play, there's a murderer at the matinee, there are dead men in the aisles
And the patrons and the actors too are uncertain if the show is through and with sidelong looks await their cue, but the frozen mask just smiles
Posted: 30 Aug 2010 20:26
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Say, I've always wanted simple laws. It's so complicated now a person could worry themselves to death wondering if they are accidentally breaking any laws. Like is it illegal to chew gum in a crowded street? What's the penalty for spitting it out on a street corner? What if I'm choking can I spit it out then? Lots of silly laws to ponder, like laws that make people pick up dog poop. They put a few of those dog poopie baskets in my neck of the woods, but I don't think very many people ever use them. I figure they put them there to look good for the northern people that might visit on holidays or something. __________________
Lucas McCain the Rifleman: A man doesn't run from a fight, Mark...but that doesn't mean you should go running *to* one, either.
Posted: 31 Aug 2010 05:55 Last Edited By: pakratmak
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I recently just read a book you would probably enjoy Tim. I don't think I posted this, but I might have. Please forgive if it's a duplicate.
But the backdrops peel and the sets give way and the cast get eaten by the play, there's a murderer at the matinee, there are dead men in the aisles
And the patrons and the actors too are uncertain if the show is through and with sidelong looks await their cue, but the frozen mask just smiles
Posted: 08 Nov 2011 04:11 Last Edited By: Tim
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I totally agree with you.
Posted: 08 Nov 2011 07:42 Last Edited By: Matches
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Propaganda and Nonsense...
So, because I can't sell bottles of my own urine and label it BBQ sauce and sell it at the county fair we are at threat of losing our freedom?
Really that's what he chooses as his example? That you need to show you meet minimum health inspection standards to sell a food product in this country?
And of course, this kind of bit is made to get your blood boiling about having to deal with regulation (regulations that you would insist everyone else abide by but which you should be exempt) but is really about letting larger more dangerous businesses do as they please.
I'm sorry, regulation is a good thing. It's great to imaigne that perfect world where everyone does the right thing based on long term self interest, but history teaches us that humans are very bad at exactly that.
So, yeah, let's keep folks from selling BBQ sauce at county fairs without showing that the product meets the same minimum standards that everyone else has to. Quite frankly, if your not willing to provide a safe and clean product, you shouldn't be selling it.
And for low flow toilets and florescent lightbulbs (both of which have had technological advances that make the old complaints meaningless), the individual items aside, the government regulates what we can buy not just for our own good but the good of the environment, it's the same reason your car has a catalytic converter. The idea that we should require the best technology to ensure clean water, clearn air, and limit our dependance on dirty forms of energy manufacture, sound like great ideas, but heck hath no fury like people told the old products are no longer for sale.
The idea of demonizing the government for regulations without really offering a solid example of a regulation that doesn't serve an obvious good just shows how desperate this argument is.
I'm a big believer in tip of your nose libertarianism, the problem is when you get down to it, very little really ends at the tip of your nose, and so we all have to make and work within rules that ensure that what goes beyond your nose is inoffensive to mine, and vice versa of course.
Posted: 09 Nov 2011 00:52
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I don't have an issue with any of what you're saying Matches but it's only a part of the picture and there's a substantial difference between regulation that protects people and barriers to entry which protect only certain interests to the exclusion and sometimes detriment of everyone else. __________________
But the backdrops peel and the sets give way and the cast get eaten by the play, there's a murderer at the matinee, there are dead men in the aisles
And the patrons and the actors too are uncertain if the show is through and with sidelong looks await their cue, but the frozen mask just smiles
Posted: 09 Nov 2011 07:05
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Certainly, but is that what we're talking about here.
Government regulation, is one of those things, like taxes, that are very easily manipulated beyond a reasonable discussion.
We all hate taxes, none of us want to pay them, but we do all know that we need some kind of funding mechanism for government, and pretty much all feel why we are happy to pay our "fair share" someone else should be paying more.
Can regulation be barrier to entry? I suppose, but then we should discuss those specific barriers, why they are there, and how much of a barrier they are.
Likewise, when you start to conflate the idea of regulation hindering business and regulation hindering "free choice" well now you're getting into a whole other bag of hammers.
You can certainly discuss the merit of an individual regulation (do we need to conserve water with low flow toilets, are such items really better overall or are they trading a headache for a stomach ache, or if the rules go beyond reasonableness) but without a specific discussion of what that reasonibleness is, there isn't anywhere to go honestly in the debate.
Now, this book might have some great essays about real individual issues of people thawrted by the beuracracy, but based on the examples they use (a man who had to follow health code laws to sell a food product, a proposed law that never went anywhere and would never go anywhere to ban salt, and the old blather about low flow toiletes and flourescent light bulbs) they don't seem to have such examples.
More to the point, the authors feel that having to face health code regulations as being such a self evident infringement of personal freedom as to make that their go to example in their interview.
Government regulation is like traffic laws, we hate them when we are caught by them, and laud them when they keep others in their place.
We want to make sure that rat parts are ending up in our BBQ sauce in acceptable levels when Hunts or Heinz or Dow Chemical is making it, and what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the Gander when a a small time maker of the product enteres the market. And if you had a seperate track for smaller lables, well then you can be certain Uncle Dow's BBQ sauce and industrial solvent would be on the shelves right next his fellow small businessmen.
One of the reasons the government produces so many regulations is that people are really good at subverting the ones in place, so you do need new regulations on a regular basis to plug the holes created since the last set of regulations. The other reason is of course that as we go through a bloodless revolution ever few years, all the old regulations are tossed and new ones written in line with the current political power structure.
Which is the other thing when you say, the govenrment produced X thousand pages of new regulatiosn in the last year, there is no disucssion of whether or not these regulations are more or less restrictive than the ones that came before them.
Instead they just approach the idea that all regulations are bad, which we know isn't really the case, since we do generally want some regulations on those other than ourselves.
Posted: 10 Nov 2011 03:57 Last Edited By: pakratmak
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You're actually preaching to the choir here Matches. I understand regulation is necessary in many cases where people or businesses would run wild if allowed to go unchecked. The idea that all regulation is bad is a bad idea itself and comes along with the rest of the 'free market' mythology some people swear by.
There does come a point where it becomes excessive on occasion though. Some regulations are created as barriers to entry. Some are created to drive a particular type of business into the ground. Some are created just to add a new stream of income to a town or municipality. Some are annoyances which cost the small business person for the sake of the aesthetic tastes of local lawmakers.
A few examples:
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But the backdrops peel and the sets give way and the cast get eaten by the play, there's a murderer at the matinee, there are dead men in the aisles
And the patrons and the actors too are uncertain if the show is through and with sidelong looks await their cue, but the frozen mask just smiles
Posted: 21 Nov 2011 05:04
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Criticism of Obama by Cenk and more about taking away positive regulation:
and the epitome of bad regulation; trying to own a gun in New Jersey:
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But the backdrops peel and the sets give way and the cast get eaten by the play, there's a murderer at the matinee, there are dead men in the aisles
And the patrons and the actors too are uncertain if the show is through and with sidelong looks await their cue, but the frozen mask just smiles
Posted: 27 Nov 2011 15:34
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So...sorry, I just got aroudn to watching these, and let me give you my thoughts on this.
What you are asking for isn't less regulation, but more regulation.
Here is the reality, with the food cart vendors, what you have is a statemnet that food can't be prepared in the cart, which of course will have sanitation capabilities far less than a fixed structure. You can create new regulations (more governmnet) to cover a complex series of differnces for the food carts, hire more inspectors to make sure they are serving clean healthy food, Oh, and make sure that they don't just move a block up the street after you close them down.
Given that kind of cost and expense (one many cities put up with) CHicago has apparently opted to just say to heck with it, and not allow food carts. See, small government and small regulation, a single page as it were, as opposed to the far more complex regualtions and qualifications that would be necessary to allow food preperation on carts.
Traditional African Hair Braiding is all well and good, but again, you are asking for a seperate line of regulation for the African Hair Braiding, and not the other types of cosmotology involved, and then you need to again, have more regulators invovled to seek out these home businesses to make sure they are actually doing only the work they are licesned to do (as they are not trained to use the harsh chemicals involved in other types of cosmotology). As always the report gives false and misleading informaiton unrelated to the question. A security gaurd doen't need to be trained in hazaradous chemical use and disposal, they don't use them, so they don't need those hours of training.
I'm not saying these regulations are the best method of dealing with these issues, in fact I'll say that with food carts, and hair braiding, other municipalities have found ways of dealing with these types of businesses that allow them to be healthy and safe, but again at the cost of new regulations and enforcement. But at the end of the day, you want the guy sellling food out of his pick up truck to have some kind of certificaiont that the food is clean to eat, you want the woman who opens a business next door to you not to be storing dangerous chemicals on their property.
The abortion clinic regulations are about running a legal business out of busienss, and there is no suggestion otherwise by the proponants of the legislation, so I have no defense of that.
And the clip size rules are again, based on the broader simplier legislation to restrict weapons that the community finds dangerous, and let's just be clear here, a .22 can kill you just as easily as a larger caliber. Suggesting that it's a "squirel gun" is again and intentionaly misleading description of the weapon.
Again, I don't agree necessarily with the regulation, but acting like the regulation is illogical silly or even onerous pressumes your own sense of appropriate regulation (which probably has no regulations on these things) as opposed to what the general electorate is in favor of.
Posted: 28 Nov 2011 03:55
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Overall, more regulation is not in my interest in the least except in those places where it is sorely lacking. In other places I would greatly reduce the regulations and in both it would be in the interest of finding an acceptable level; simply stated: a 'justifiable' level of regulation.
We could probably argue at great length what amount of regulation is 'justifiable' and maybe find some middle ground along the way for some items while others will have us perpetually divided. I am unashamed about my biases, as much as you might be. At least we have the possibility of achieving a compromise somewhere along the way on the things we don't agree upon from the start. That's a good thing for us.
The politicians from the local levels up to the federal level that are making these decisions though; who do they find compromise with aside from themselves? The interest of the electorate, meaning the people and the Constitutions they are meant to represent and defend or the largest contributors? Near as I can tell, these politicians aren't cartoonish ideologues that we should expect to fill the exact role any one individual might expect them to(even when we do just that-and most of us are guilty of this to extremes) and what each of them will do in any given occasion is whatever yields the most beneficial results; whoever those results happen to be beneficial to or what that beneficence actually costs to any of us at the time is another set of arguments. I can't in all fairness blame the politicians when they've got to make these decisions, except when the decisions are that blatantly onerous that it's not just my personal biases that are affronted. __________________
But the backdrops peel and the sets give way and the cast get eaten by the play, there's a murderer at the matinee, there are dead men in the aisles
And the patrons and the actors too are uncertain if the show is through and with sidelong looks await their cue, but the frozen mask just smiles
Posted: 30 Nov 2011 20:48
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Here's some regulation we can do without frankly. Tim, this affects you directly.
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But the backdrops peel and the sets give way and the cast get eaten by the play, there's a murderer at the matinee, there are dead men in the aisles
And the patrons and the actors too are uncertain if the show is through and with sidelong looks await their cue, but the frozen mask just smiles
Posted: 02 Dec 2011 23:12
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Well I'm discouraged. I think or hope Google and Facebook can handle it, but I'm thinking more than ever I got to finish my schooling and get my bachelors. The days of making a living by being an entrepreneur in this country are over. Heck, even if you have a degree you have to be lucky to get a job. Seriously, this combined with the way my Christmas sales are going has me bummed beyond reason. __________________
Lucas McCain the Rifleman: A man doesn't run from a fight, Mark...but that doesn't mean you should go running *to* one, either.
Victory!
