Dodd-Frank Kills the Congo [ed.: Application of Law of Unintended Consequences]

Great Debates
61

And you have the power to say ‘no’. And guess what? If the minimum wage is set far above what they’re willing to pay, they won’t hire you at all.

It’s not minimum wages that set salaries - it’s market forces. If a job is worth $10/hr, then that’s generally what people will be paid. Because if someone tries to hire them for $5, someone else will say, “Hey wait, I can offer $6, and still make $4 profit!” And someone else will then offer 7, and so on, until the market reaches a point where it’s not really worth it to anyone to take the time, expense, hassle, and risk to hire someone because the productive value of the job just isn’t worth it.

The large majority of the people in the U.S. do not make minimum wage. If you think people are powerless in the face of corporate power, you’ll have to explain why that is. Hell, in my province even untrained high school students working as busboys and 7-11 attendants are getting a couple of bucks over minimum wage. That’s because the market sets the price - not the government.

By far, the most monopolistic situations in the U.S. are ones where the government has intervened in order to create the monopoly. There are very few companies in history that have ever managed to maintain a monopoly in a market for any length of time, and the ones that have maintained a monopoly have generally done so by just being much better than their competition. Such monopolies are not a bad thing. Apple currently has a near-monopoly on tablet computers. But it’s not a coercive monopoly - Apple has a 90+% market share because they’re really, really good at what they do. There are zero barriers to entry in the tablet space, and many companies have tried - and so far, they’ve all come up short.

Funny, most products have safety and quality standards far above the government minimums, or they have safety and quality standards that are high even in areas where the government does not regulate at all. For example, flat screen monitor makers have been intensely focused on panel quality for years, but the government has nothing to say about how many dead pixels your screen can have, or how accurate the color representation has to be.

The government does not mandate six airbags in a car, but most modern cars have them. The vast majority of cars had ABS brake long before the government started requiring them. UL approval is a standard requirement for electrical devices, but Underwriter’s Labs is not a government agency - it’s a testing lab run by a consortium of insurance companies.

If government is necessary to protect your safety, how do you explain all this?

As opposed to now, when multinational corporations work with governments to set up the playing field to their benefit, to prevent competition from small business? When the big unions have rigged the game so that no one can get a government contract unless they have a union workforce? When the corporate tax rate is the highest in the world, but the large favored companies get so many tax breaks that they pay little to no tax at all, but small businesses don’t?

A company like GE gets billions of dollars in stimulus money that small businesses are utterly unable to get because they can’t afford lobbyists in Washington or are powerful enough to have the ear of the President. Then GE uses that money to subsidize its own operations so small businesses can’t compete with them.

Mattel sets up a multi-million dollar testing facility for lead in toys - then uses the regulatory power of government to extend that requirement to everyone, including small independent toy makers and thrift shops and garage sales, forcing Mattel’s competitors to destroy $200 million dollars in children’s toys because they can’t meet the requirement.

If you’re really worried about big companies stomping all over the little guy, then you should join us and demand less regulation and more open markets. Because small companies have all sorts of natural advantages against large ones. SpaceX is going to fly its rocket for 1/6 the cost of Boeing’s rocket - unless of course the government cuts SpaceX’s legs out from under it by giving Boeing a monopoly.

It’s a very nice idea in principle that you will vote in well-meaning politicians who will then go to Washington and look after your interests and protect you from the rich and powerful. In practice, it’s a different story, sadly.

Yeah, there’s nothing quite like the power of having a legal monopoly on the use of force to get what you want, as the government has.

You have it backwards. The government is demonstrably taking power away from you, and now it’s taking it away from your children, too. Every kid born in the United States now is carrying a debt load of tens of thousands of dollars, which that child will have to work to pay off. That debt isn’t even money invested in the future - it’s money being used to give people today higher salaries and cushier retirements.

That the government takes power from you is not theoretical - it’s the sole reason for the existence of government in the first place. But most of the fears I hear from the left of the wild excesses of capitalism ARE theoretical. They are worries about events that have not happeneed, and for which there is no evidence that they will happen.

What I usually hear is people pointing out some sucky job condition or standard of living in the 1800’s or early 1900’s, and then blaming capitalism for it. When in fact, what they’re really pointing out is that our standard of living has improved since then.

Sometimes companies do break contracts with people, or cheat and defraud them, or otherwise violate their rights. And libertarians fully support a government that will take action and punish those companies in cases like that. We’re not talking about anarchy.

62

Really. Never happened. All a bunch of stories, making shit up.

63

Oh, I’m sure you can find excesses of capitalism. But the wide sweeping fears that people will be paid subsistence wages, be forced into company towns, and their products will routinely kill people if governments don’t stop them from cutting corners are widly overblown or completely groundless.

When the airlines were deregulated, the left claimed that safety would plummet, rural and poor people would be shut out, and the whole system would fail as rapacious competition destroyed the industry. What actually happened was that safety increased, prices came down, and access to airline travel expanded dramatically.

When trucking was deregulated, the left claimed that absent government control of the industry, big trucking firms would crush all the small competitors, then take control of shipping and jack everyone’s prices up. What actually happened was that the number of trucking companies increased dramatically, prices came down, and performance improved.

When the railroads were deregulated, the left claimed that we were entering a new era of rail barons - that monopolies would result and the lifeblood of the nation would be choked off by rapacious capitalists. What actually happened was that competition increased, efficiency increased, and rail freight came down in price and rail routes became far more efficient.

When Canada privatized our air traffic control system, the left claimed that flight safety would be put at risk and that the Canadian flying public would be held hostage by private companies who would control the airways. What actually happened was that costs came down, flight scheduling became more efficient, gate delays went down, and the air traffic control system went from being a drag on the Canadian economy to a profitable enterprise. NavCanada is now a case study in how to properly run an air traffic control system.

The left’s prediction track record on deregulation is abysmal. They always predict that the sky is going to fall if the government withdraws from controlling the market, and almost always the real result is an improvement in efficiency, more competition, more choice for consumers, and higher economic efficiency.

So forgive me if I cast a skeptical eye on the notion that if the government doesn’t regulate drugs, or wages, or other economic activities, the world will fall in and the rapacious capitalists will crush the little people.

64

I really don’t understand why you feel the need to gloss history to such an extent, Sam. It’s not like unionization, trust-busting, minimum-wage laws, child-labor laws, OSHA, the FDA, etc just sprang up out of a desire for larger government.

One can argue that these agencies and regulations have gone to far or are less necessary in today’s economic environment, but to pretend like they were created to address a problem that never existed makes your argument hard to buy.

65

But if he admits the problems existed then he’s faced with the possibility that removing the government’s oversight will bring them back.

66

IYHO.

Cite?

Cite?

Cite?

I remember a somewhat different history, one in which the U.S. government stepped in and rescued at least a significant portion of the industry. Remember Conrail?

Cite?

“The left…the left…the left…the left.” It’s like “the Jews” in the Gospel of John, some monolithic, undifferentiated mob of people. Really, your use of “the left” in that manner is enough to discredit you all by itself, because there isn’t a cite anywhere in God’s green earth that can say what “the left” said about a given issue, now or back then.

Kinda like the right’s prediction track record on, say, environmental regulation. Clean air and water acts, cap and trade to limit CFCs or whatever, are all going to kill entire industries. And the costs routinely turn out to be way less than predicted by industry scaremongers and their useful idiots among the right-wing opinionating set.

So I guess there’s nobody with a good track record for predicting jack shit. Like the saying goes, prediction is hard, especially about the future.

You’re right - look at things now! Thanks to the GOP’s blocking any followup to the socialistic 2009 stimulus, we’ve got full employment, high wages, and all the rest! People are making good money, buying back the houses that they were foreclosed out of, and life is great - nobody’s getting crushed at all!

Sorry, got a contact high there for a moment. :rolleyes:

67

Please, tell me I’m being wooshed, otherwise this may be the saddest thing I read this month.

You are a grown, adult person.* You follow politics. And yet you are genuinely shocked and surprised that politician would say one thing and do the other, either through deceit or incompetence? I now understand why they give bills titles like “An act to bring sunshine every day” or “The anti-puppy-killer law” or “The Patriot Act” … people actually fall for it.

  • If I’m wrong about this, I’m pretty sure phony do-gooder politicians were covered in a Scooby-doo episode.
68

Bathos. Libertarianism is more farce than drama.

69

Yes, don’t do anything that affects anything. Unless it turns out you were supposed to do something, in which case, for the love of God: don’t not do it!

70

Yeah, the healthcare reform was pretty bad too, because it, like Dodd-Frank, didn’t go far enough. But there are substantively good aspects to the legislation. The entire point of Dodd-Frank (and I suspect that in your drooling, knee-jerk desire to slam anything related to government, you’ve failed to understand any of this) is to provide some legal framework by which the government could wrap up these financial companies, and their myriad and complex investments and liabilities, in an orderly fashion and without having to just throw money at them like was done with TARP. On top of that, the American people would like the banks to return to their more positive role of greasing the wheels of the economy, and stop acting like predatory banksters that are only in it to rip people off selling fraudulent garbage.

Like I said, it’s not perfect legislation, and we can thank the banks for that because they, just like the insurance industry, own the fucking government. But to acknowledge that and then turn around and say “Well, they shouldn’t pass any legislation then,” is what either a simpleton would say, or somebody with a crony capitalist agenda. All the banks and their lobbyists had to do was whine “Gee, these regulations sure are onerous!” to get all the dipshit reactionaries and free market cranks to speak up for them. God forbid the government try and make Wall Street less of a casino.

71

I would like to buy a car without airbags. How do I do that? It is currently illegal to manufacture and sell a car without airbags in the United States.

72

Wow. If you actually knew 0.01% of what you were talking about, you could really be a positive force for change.

73

What a devastating rebuttal.

74

But nobody is. Your claims are demonstrably false.

I don’t earn the minimum wage. I don’t know what you earn, but I suspect you don’t either. Nobody I know earns the minimum wage. In fact, 95% of all working Americans earn above the minimum wage.

So why aren’t companies “driving down” the wages of the 95% of workers shown in table 1, right now? After all, you seem to think they have the power to do so.

75

Change the law. Simple.

76

Elect a president and Congress that will change the law. Easy as can be - Democracy in action!

77

That’s sort of my whole point. You just proved my point.

I vote for 1 Representative every 2 years, 1 Senator every 6 years and 1 President every 4 years. In order to get the law changed, they need to

  • Make it clear at election time that this is a priority of theirs, and convince 51% of the people to vote for them
  • Introduce a bill to change the law
  • Horsetrade favors with other Congresscritters in order to shepherd it through
  • Get it voted on favorably in both houses of Congress
  • Have the President sign it

And that’s just for one thing. The CPSC standards on airbags. We haven’t talked about FDA drug approvals, buying diamonds in the Congo, debit card interchange fees, or a billion other things that are buried in 2,000 page bills such as Sam Stone describes.

Or we can do it the much easier way…

Not allow a new law, or regulation like this to ever be enacted in the first place, by limiting the scope of government.

Then the decision is entirely up to me and the provider. It is 100% in my control all the time.

Do you not see the difference?

78

No, I really don’t. The government is the extension of the will of the people. Following the rules enacted by said government is the price for living in a democratic society. You are absolutely within your rights to try to mold the laws to fit your notions of proper governance. All you need to do is elect people to do it.

The problem Libertarians have in accomplishing their goals is that they aren’t able to limit themselves to issues like, to pick one example, conflict mining regulations in the Congo. They always end up overstepping, trying to abolish OSHA or some such, or eliminate airbag regulations, and lose the ability to win popular support.

Attack bad regulations as bad, and you will find many more people (myself included) receptive to your cause. Attacking all regulation as de facto bad and you come across as someone blinded by ideology.

I’m perfectly willing to consider that this reporting requirement was a poorly-considered law. But I’m not willing to use its effects to eliminate the FDA.

79

For what it’s worth, I wish you and those who think like you COULD opt out of government regulation and form your own little civilization. It would provide a nice object lesson to show what happens when a society fires its metaphorical police force.

“What happened to Liza? I haven’t seen her in days.”
“She took some aspirin that was laced with cyanide. She’s dead.”

“What happened to Rick? He hasn’t been around lately.”
“Oh, he ran into a lightpost and his steering wheel, unimpeded by an airbag, impaled him to his shoddily-manufactured seatback.”

“What happened to John?”
“Someone sold him some e. coli with a little beef mixed into it. He died last week.”

80

Isn’t that a commercial, some guy in the Swiss Alps in lederhosen, sort of yelling/yodeling down the mountainside? “EEEEEEEEEE-coli!” They have, like, warning systems over there?