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Politics : Politics of Energy -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Road Walker who wrote (1268)	8/8/2008 11:47:17 AM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 86355

Some of the pages are actually limitations on others, and make the intervention less. Others are just the regulators and legislators not being very concise. But generally they make it more. So certainly all those pages is a sign of intervention. But for about the fourth time now, regulation is not the only form of intervention, so more pages of regulation is not a clear sign of higher overall intervention. Compared to quite a few other countries, you can get a business set up faster in the US, you can fire people with less difficulty, your less likely to feel a severe need to bribe government officials, our overall level of taxation is lower than most other countries who are wealthy enough to be able to afford a high level of taxation, we have lower import barriers. etc. etc. And one of the big reason we have so many pages of regulation, is that in the US the regulatory culture is to try to spell out the details, while in many other countries (rich or poor) the culture is to give a much greater degree of discretion to the regulator (or in some cases to politicians). So more pages of regulation, doesn't effectively mean more regulatory restriction or intervention.

To: Road Walker who wrote (1268)	8/8/2008 12:32:12 PM
From: Joe Btfsplk	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 86355

more pages of regulations.... OK I'll bite. Then what are all the pages for? Bureaucrats trying to justify their existence. Absent political pull ala ADM, businesses are subject to consumer sovereignty. When Maytag blew a hard won reputation for quality they were gone in short order. The kind of people who qualify for teacher's colleges largely captured the education business with political influence. Their incentives are not to emulate and improve on successes. Unlike Maytag, they blunder on. We've increasingly ignored good advice: A wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government. In lieu of wise and frugal we have Maxine Waters, Pelosi, Ted Stevens, et al. The concept of a spontaneous development of extended orders is counterintuitive. We ignore founding principles at our peril.