Corporations are organizations, not individuals. It’s absurd to suggest that a regulation prohibiting corporations from fixing commodity prices, for example, is tantamount to an infringement of a civil liberty.
Any law that applies to corporations also applies to the small business owner, who is most definitely an individual who has a right to make a living. The example of anti-price fixing legislation is a poor one that I’d like to make a couple of comments on:
- It is legislation, it originated in Congress, as per Congresses duties. I object to the executive branch issuing regulations, which have the same force as any law passed by Congress, effectively making the executive branch an legislative branch.
- Price fixing laws are sensible and CONTRIBUTE to competition by preventing monopolistic activity. What I object to is laws that outlaw competition in the interest of maintaining monopolies, such as in the electricity industry.
**Airlines were regulated in the first place because it was feared that if carriers were allowed to race to the bottom with respect to ticket prices they’d sacrifice safety to achieve economy, and it would be difficult to prove that hasn’t happened. Consumers may pay less per passenger mile today than they did in 1977, but they may also be flying in an airliner that is dangerously obsolete.
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As long as safety regulations are enforced, this should not be a worry.
As for the telecommunications industry, if ‘unmitigated disaster’ is what you meant by the word ‘success’ I would have to agree with you – radio as a popular media is dead, and let’s not forget Global Crossing and MCI WorldCom as shining examples of the new, happy life the Telecommunications Act of 1996 has ushered us into.
Any time more companies are able to participate there will be examples of problems, just as allowing more people into a public park means there will be more crime in that park. Radio is dead because it’s obsolete. Which is another problem with heavy regulation. It stifles innovation. When the government finally recognizes reality and deregulates, the dislocations are extreme because they waited to long.
That’s not a fact, it’s an inference. But it sounds to me like you’re arguing that pesky government regulations – reaction control, monitoring, containment, disposal and so forth – are the only thing keeping Mom & Pop out of the nuclear power industry. There’s an old joke that the definition of insanity is to repeat a mistake while expecting a different outcome, and by that measure deregulation of the power industry is the epitome of lunacy itself.
I already said that safety regulations make sense. However, regulations in some industries go way beyond insuring safety.
On the contrary, it’s businesses themselves that prefer monopoly over competition, and despite attempts to do so the government is sometimes unable to break a monopoly once it’s entrenched
Sure, they love it. Government loves it too, especially since they can regulate a monopoly so much that it essentially becomes an arm of the government. It’s socialism without actual government ownership.
