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Politics : Don't Blame Me, I Voted For Kerry
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To: Cogito who wrote (78822)8/3/2006 11:06:47 AM
From: TimFRead Replies (1) of 81568
 
By their nature, publicly owned conglomerates are motivated almost exclusively by profit.

That's an exaggeration, but its fair to say that they are motivated primarily by profit. That the profit motive is normally stronger than other concerns.

But its not just corporations who have motives other than the larger public good. Politicians and regulators have their own motivations and concerns. Do tight restrictions on how many cabs can server Manhattan help the public good? Do Mohair subsidies and sugar import barriers, and subsidies for corporate advertising? Is the public good served when mountains or regulations reduce competition and allow politically favored large companies to reap massive excess profits?

If you reduce and simplify the mountains of regulation that currently exist (at least if you do so in ways that are not foolish) you not only reduce compliance costs, increase efficiency and economic growth, and reduce government intrusiveness and thus increase freedom (all of which are part of the "larger public good"); you also allow the regulators and the enforcers of regulations to focus on serious issues, and less on trivial issues, or issues totally unrelated to the larger public good.

Some regulations directly harm the public good, others are useless or unnecessary. Others do some good, but may not be worth their costs. Others are worth the costs, and some are probably vital. You can list the vital ones and imagine that any deregulation will go after them first but that's isn't a very reasonable argument even if it might work a a matter of rhetoric.
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