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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: LindyBill who wrote (37655)	4/3/2004 12:06:39 PM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 794443

Government regulation consistently distorts the "market." SUV's would not exist if it had not been for "CAFE." I agree with you--regulation distorts the market much like tax law distorts the market. One of the problems with regulation is that the laws are process oriented rather than results oriented. So you get a law that says industry must use technology A rather than that the industry must reduce pollution to B level, which results in distortion (plus a boon to some legislator's home industry) and inferior results. Another is too-cute laws, which result in building family transportation on a truck chassis as you describe. You're throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Remember when Ayn Rand said something like we can't say that capitalism has failed because we haven't tried it yet? Well, the same goes for environmental regulation. You are what you measure is another slogan that applies. My POV is that the energy mess we find ourselves in was directly created by the Government. I won't argue with that. I'll just question the alternative. It's fine to rail against environmental regulation--until you think about rivers on fire. We can certainly do a better job of regulation, but can we eschew it entirely? I don't think so. If you just want to scrap it altogether, you have your head in the sand. The problem is bad regulation, not regulation.