Regulation vs Deregulation

[Conat]

well, I'm currently doing a research paper on Regulation vs. Deregulation, siding with regulation. I was given the following examples for reference on the topic:

Henry George
Edward Bellamy
Upton Sinclair
Rexford G Tugwell
Ralph Nader

Government Cases:
Standard Oil - 1911
AT+T - 1970s

My friend helped me out and I got 4 books on Marxism and Communism, as well as Upton's The Jungle. But would anyone like to give me a brief overview on the topic that would help me write the paper as I am fairly clueless.

thank you. :]

[NYgs23]

I don't think you're going to find much help on this forum writing a paper defending economic regulation.

[BenIsForRon]

From what standpoint? You think we need more regulation now? Or do you mean from the perspective of a meat processor in 1910? If your talking about generally "regulation: bad or good", then your paper is going to be, well, not good, because the issue is more complicated than that.

[Austrian Econ Disciple]

I'll give you examples for FREE MARKETS.

Myth of the Robber Barons - Burton W. Folsom
Man, Economy, and State - Murray N. Rothbard
America's Great Depression - Murray N. Rothbard
Economics In One Lesson - Henry Hazlitt
Human Action - Ludwig Von Mises
Economic Freedom and Interventionism - Ludwig Von Mises
Prices and Production and Other Works On Money, the Business Cycle, and the Gold Standard - F.A. Hayek and Joseph T. Salerno


Read those works and you will come to a far greater understanding. If you want specific examples, they lay those out in the works and you can also get:

The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History by Thomas E. Woods Jr.
33 Questions About American History You're Not Supposed to Ask by Thomas E. Woods Jr.
Meltdown: A Free-Market Look at Why the Stock Market Collapsed, the Economy Tanked, and Government Bailouts Will Make Things Worse by Thomas E. Woods Jr
How Capitalism Saved America: The Untold History of Our Country, from the Pilgrims to the Present by Thomas Dilorenzo
Defending the Undefendable by Walter Block
Theory of Socialism and Capitalism, A by Hans-Hermann Hoppe

That's a good starting point. There now you can show how regulation is a great distorter and hindrance to the market. Don't come into the paper with the dubious premise of "devil's advocate". You can't have both sides both portraying the same scenario that both regulation and de-regulation are boons. Only one is. Show it.

[Conat]

Well basically the question is how much government should the U.S. have in the late 19th century. (Regulation or deregulation)

[Austrian Econ Disciple]

Well basically the question is how much government should the U.S. have in the late 19th century. (Regulation or deregulation)

Ideally, only judicial activity (Enforcement of contracts, fraud, etc.) and...in times of War supreme commander of the forces of the United States. They should have no say in the Economy whatsoever, moreover, nor should they have any hand in the creation of currency or legal tender. I support the return to State Militia's. This goes in hand with the Economy, because the creation of arms and munitions actually hurts and diminishes the Economic output and standard of living of a country (Read Economics in One Lesson about this). To clarify, State Militia would be private citizens called upon in a time of war for the common defense (This means no aggressive, or pre-emptive wars). They come together to train every so often, and or do it in their own time. This is mostly what the US was like for much of the 19th century and how the Civil War was fought....With the States also having the Militia and the Federal Government no standing Army, this checks the power of the Federal Government. I also believe that Militia's fight with more conviction than any other force and history proves this; they rarely if ever lose.

[NYgs23]

Well basically the question is how much government should the U.S. have in the late 19th century. (Regulation or deregulation)

Zero coercive restraints. If there is a dispute that the disputants can't resolve on their own, it should be mediated or arbitrated by a mutually agreed-upon third party. If it is determined that an act of aggression has been committed, the victim should receive compensatory damages.

[dannno]

If a corporation was polluting my land and air, I should be able to sue them for violating my property rights (let's say I have a farm and a water source near a power plant)

With regulations, the government mandates an allowable limit of pollution. As long as the corporation is within their allowable limit then they can pollute my land and watershed and air as much as they want. I can't sue them.

During the Industrial Revolution, industry colluded with the government to form regulations so that they could pollute with certain restrictions.. but since they own the lobbyists, they can chip away and pretty much write any regulation legislation they want.

[lester1/2jr]

I thin kthe best argument for regulation out there is the ultimate fighting league. they were hounded almost to extinction in the early 90's for being barabaric and "human gladiator shows" so one day they said "okay what do we have to do?"

they established weight classes, made eye gouging and kicking to the nuts and so forth illegal and now they are like a multi billion dollar industry. and still awesome. take that, austrians!

[Elwar]

If you're defending regulation, an easy shot that will get you good grades is to go after the "deregulation" of electricity in California and natural gas in Georgia in the late '90s.

Though it wasn't really deregulation, it was creating a monopoly of suppliers and deregulating retailers, your teacher and other students will be blind to that fact and wowed by all of the terrible things that came from such "deregulation".

True deregulation of electricity happened in Texas where electricity suppliers (and retailers) can compete against each other (I was able to choose wind electricity at 9 cents per KWH locked in for the year, which was more expensive than my 7 cents a KWH but that year had those $100+ oil prices and I ended up saving money).

Or just talk about how great communism and facism is and how regulation fits right in with those great social models.

[Elwar]

Oh, I noticed your AT&T reference too...

I actually tend to use AT&T as an example of how government interference set us back about 80 years in technology where we could have had the Internet we enjoy today back in the 60s if it weren't for the government created phone monopoly...

I don't recall too much of significance in the 70s other than maybe enough other phone companies were becoming competitive that it lead to the 1984 break-up of the government created AT&T monopoly.

[Bucjason]

well, I'm currently doing a research paper on Regulation vs. Deregulation, siding with regulation. I was given the following examples for reference on the topic:

Henry George
Edward Bellamy
Upton Sinclair
Rexford G Tugwell
Ralph Nader

Government Cases:
Standard Oil - 1911
AT+T - 1970s

My friend helped me out and I got 4 books on Marxism and Communism, as well as Upton's The Jungle. But would anyone like to give me a brief overview on the topic that would help me write the paper as I am fairly clueless.

thank you. :]



I think we should regulate teachers, by not allowing them to give a passing grade to a paper that is sure to be a brain-dead analysis of psuedo-economics.


Get lost ya damn commie...

[BenIsForRon]

I actually tend to use AT&T as an example of how government interference set us back about 80 years in technology where we could have had the Internet we enjoy today back in the 60s if it weren't for the government created phone monopoly...



That's an extraordinary claim, do you have some articles backing that up, as in the whole "we could have had internet in the 60's" thing/

[dannno]

I thin kthe best argument for regulation out there is the ultimate fighting league. they were hounded almost to extinction in the early 90's for being barabaric and "human gladiator shows" so one day they said "okay what do we have to do?"

they established weight classes, made eye gouging and kicking to the nuts and so forth illegal and now they are like a multi billion dollar industry. and still awesome. take that, austrians!

There is nothing wrong with a private entity regulating itself... If the OP wanted to argue for that instead of government regulation, then I'd be all for it :)

[Liberty Rebellion]

There is nothing wrong with a private entity regulating itself... If the OP wanted to argue for that instead of government regulation, then I'd be all for it :)

Exactly. Consumers can demand that products be certified to a specific standard and private regulators would do just that. That type of regulation I'm fine with. It's when government gets involved, such as with the financial rating agencies, that the market becomes distorted as inevitably the government will use its regulatory power to regulate in favor of those that are politically well connected. See Enron etc.

Some people think of deregulation as specific areas in an industry which are exempt from the powers of the relevant gov't regulatory agency. However, the fact that the gov't regulatory agency exists and is still regulating other areas of that same industry distorts the market. To really deregulate the banking industry/market, for example, you would have to eliminate the Federal Reserve, the FDIC, the SEC, etc.

Free-markets are free from coercive regulation. Markets less regulated through coercion are not free

[Elwar]

That's an extraordinary claim, do you have some articles backing that up, as in the whole "we could have had internet in the 60's" thing/

Purely my own conjecture based upon my Telecom background and research I had to do for a paper on AT&T.

I posted the paper here:
http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?t=213517

I'd say the technology was severely slowed when the phone industry was nationalized in 1918 and development ground to a halt in 1934 when AT&T was given a monopoly.

With the Telecom act in the early 1990s bringing competition back into the marketplace, it spurred quite a bit of technological advancement that brought us much what we have today in less than a decade.

Had the telecom industry not been roped-in in 1918, information technology would have been able to grow...perhaps contributing to advances in all other technology with better communication technology.

Pure speculation though...we can't know for sure.

[YumYum]

Well basically the question is how much government should the U.S. have in the late 19th century. (Regulation or deregulation)

"The Jungle" is an excellent read that exposed the explotation of immigrant workers in the Chicago slaughterhouses at the turn of the century. In an ideal free market capitalistic society, which I have referred to as "Free Market Utopia", people wouldn't exploit each other. If they did, they wouldn't be a part of the system, they wouldn't survive. In the real world we live in, capitalism has degenerated into legalized slavery, which has been termed "corporatism", which Ralph Nader condemns. The conditions that workers endured during The Gilded Age were terrible, and the regulations imposed by the government was a backlash to the greed and the abuses of the bosses. If there hadn't been government regulations, in time, the working class would have rose up against the bosses and the factory owners and slaughtered them in mass. People can only take so much abuse. Free Market Utopia is awesome in theory, but in reality it can never exist, just like Communist Utopia has never, nor will ever exist.

[erowe1]

What's wrong with being exploited? Another word for that is "employed."

Also, Ralph Nader's condemnation of corporatism is nothing compared to Ron Paul's. Please don't confuse corporatism with free markets. The two things are mutually exclusive.

[YumYum]

What's wrong with being exploited? Another word for that is "employed."

Also, Ralph Nader's condemnation of corporatism is nothing compared to Ron Paul's. Please don't confuse corporatism with free markets. The two things are mutually exclusive.

You need to read "The Jungle". Women employees have to give sex to the bosses to keep their jobs, and their husband's jobs; abusing children; working in sub-zero tempatures, the list goes on. I haven't confused corporatism with free markets.

[lx43]

Ask yourself: Did govt regulation stop Madoff from bilking billions from his investors? Did the SEC stop Enron, Worldcom, SunBeam, Tyco, and I can go on and on. Regulation is a re-actionary element after the bad dead has happened.

Did govt regulation stop the housing market or did the govt create it? I suggest you check out Thomas Woods book "Meltdown".