Out in regulation land is Dodd-Frank, waiting to become full grown.
Here is a question asked about Dodd-Frank in comparison to the NCAA.
The question is, can Congress act quickly enough to add regulations to stay ahead of the Wall Street Quants, Accountants and Lawyers? Or, if they pass the rule making off to some agency, do we lose democratic control of the process?
Hat tip to the Instapundit.
Regards — Cliff
The short answer is that the greater the size of the central government, the smaller the voice of the people in determining a nation's course. This is why many of the great unwashed fear Big Government. They intuitively know that by ceding control of aspects of their daily living to some faceless bureaucrat in a far away place, one who in all likelihood has no basis for empathy with anyone outside their own personal context, the great unwashed are irretrievably surrendering freedom to choose.
ReplyDeleteLife is full of inequities and the financial debacle of the past 5 years or so is not some isolated event in the history of mankind. In many forms, it has been played and replayed many times before. It is also not particularly fair nor accurate to attach blame to a small group of people who live and work in lower Manhattan. THAT trough was..and remains....a very crowded place with the presence of many who not only eat out of both sides of their mouths, but talk that way as well. Our current President is one of them....as has been almost every President in the past century.
Finally, the population itself must share in the blame if they insist that we are a free society. Bad things happen when good men do nothing. Many Americans benefited handsomely from the soaring financial market before the collapse....and nobody complained. When 401k's and IRA's and stock portfolio values fell like a lead brick, the whining began and increased geometrically as losses multiplied and affected more people.
The net result was that the people...those great unwashed....have insisted that "someone" do "something" to punish "someone" for "whatever they did." And the Government got the message and began to respond to that "message." The response is to introduce more "external, objective control" which of course can only be provided by unilaterally imposing more constraints and restraints..and the ability to police those policies and (occasionally) punish...."someone" for "something."
In the end, the abuses that have infused human history will continue to arise and the only change effected will be much more central power over individual lives with a corresponding loss of personal freedoms.
When you allow a government to create enough rules to regulate everything, it becomes a police state.
It strikes me that when Neal admonishes the greed, it gets chocked up to the human condition. When he jerks back from gov't oversight, it's tyranny.
ReplyDeleteWhen you build a better mouse trap, you get smarter mice.
When you take the mouse traps away, you get wolves.
But Jack, greed is a human trait and failure....AND.....how much government oversight is simply "oversight" and how much is tyranny. I suppose it is in the eye of the beerholder......but being related to brothers who are attorneys, law begets more law to further define the existing law, which tends to only further confuse the law requiring further refinements....and in the meantime....the anomaly to be corrected merely adapts to the changing law.
ReplyDeleteNot sure I concur with the mouse/wolf metaphor. Predator is predator....no matter what the size......and they exist in nature regardless of the number of traps set.
Greed is what caused the financial meltdown...but the greedy were not simply fat rich Wall Street wolves.....the greedy were also folks from Main Street who wanted what the other guy has but cheaper.....even if they couldn't afford it......and still can't. It's not as though everyone was duped into buying $500K homes on $30K per annum income.
Occupy and defeat Wall Street?? OK...and THEN what??
Just sayin'.
Agreed.
ReplyDelete".....the greedy were also folks from Main Street who wanted what the other guy has but cheaper.....even if they couldn't afford it......and still can't."
The middle class was shown a brass ring and they grabbed it. Most found vapor.
We get dazzled into buying cheap plastic "necessities" from exotic lands. These trinkets matter not.
But, there is a strata that prospers whether we save or squander. They are embedded into our economy AND the global economy.
The game is rigged! I realize both political parties are suspect. I need help hammering Wall Street, man.
I hear...and agree with your lamentation Jack. The rich seem always to get much richer...and the rest of us just have more kids.
ReplyDeleteI think what makes America great...and always has.....is the almost genetic disposition to "stick it to the man." And while it may take some time to do so......Americans generally get around to it.
We like our justice to be pleasurable.
And...although I argue that businesses will simply move to "better climes" they do so at their own peril. It costs to move.....and very often they find that the grass is always....ALWAYS greener over the septic tank.
Then...like the prodigal son....they want to come home. And we should welcome them......for a fee.