Regulation

[g5000]

Some people want to punish "the rich" just for being rich. They see all rich people as evil doers who must be robbed and their wealth redistributed out of some bizarre sense of "fairness", and they believe the government should decide what is fair.

This is insane. Leaving it to the government to decide what is fair is just plain insane. Do liberals really want Trump and the Republicans deciding what is fair?

You see the giant flaw in that plan now?

So let's apply some common sense..

How does wealth become concentrated in the hands of a few?

One way wealth is accumulated is by inventing a better mousetrap. This kind of entrepreneurship should be encouraged, and the United States excels at promoting this kind of economic growth.

Punishing this behavior is self-defeating, but that is precisely what societies based on marxism do.


There are other means, though, by which wealth is unnaturally concentrated. It is these means which I occasionally address on this forum.

Wealth is unnaturally concentrated through legislation. This legislation is enacted by politicians who are owned by special interests. These politicians are paid a lot of money to enact legislation which favors their paymasters.

If you want true campaign finance reform, if you want truly honest government, you have to take the levers of power away from politicians and return it to the people.

Yes, this means smaller government.

It astonishes me to no end to see people demanding more and more government control over our lives, and then to see the same people complain when that control is captured by special interests.

Concentrating power at the federal level makes the capture of that power easier! I do not know why liberals continue to fail to see this obvious fact.


The two chief methods by which wealth is concentrated is through the tax code and through regulation. You are all probably all tired of hearing me go on and on about tax expenditures and how they are raping all of us in the ass.

If you don't get that by now, you never will.

So now I will talk about regulation. Good and bad regulation, and the stupid things people on both sides of the argument say.

More in the next post...

 

[rightwinger]

Golden Rule: He who has the gold, makes the rules

 

[g5000]

People who think they are conservatives go stone blind when someone talks about the need for regulations. They have been programmed on a regular basis by their propagandists that ALL regulation is bad. We see this when they start topics decrying the total cost of all regulations and scream in outrage.

They are lumping the cost of all regulations together, unwittingly being brainwashed into believing all regulation is therefore bad. It never occurs to them that some regulations, while they cost money to enact and enforce, actually save money on the whole through lives saved and damage prevented.

For example, the insurable interest regulation of home insurance. This is a good regulation which saves untold billions of dollars and untold lives.

How so? And what the hell is an insurable interest?

You cannot buy fire insurance on your neighbor's house. To buy fire insurance, you have to be in a position to lose assets if a fire occurs. You lose nothing if your neighbor's house burns down, which means you do not have an insurable interest.

Imagine if you could buy fire insurance on any house anywhere. What do you think would happen to the arson rate?

It would go through the roof, no pun intended.

If anyone could buy fire insurance on your house, how safe would you feel? How safe would your family be?

Also, think about this. If you were a home builder, and you could buy fire insurance on the houses you built after you sold them to some sucker, what's to stop you from building total firetraps?

So there is a regulation which requires a person who buys fire insurance to have an insurable interest.

At this point, libertarians will say that the market would regulate itself. Fire insurance would be so costly to insure a house you do not own, that it would be cost prohibitive.

But we have a real world example which proves the lie of that argument.

Credit default swaps.

Credit default swaps are insurance on Collateralized Debt Obligations (CDOs). CDOs are giant bundles of home mortgages.

During the great derivatives bubble, anyone could buy a credit default swap on any CDO anywhere without an insurable interest.

And they did. Big time.

Not only that, the people who built CDOs were allowed to buy credit default swaps against their own CDOs after they got some suckers to buy them. And they built MASSIVE firetraps. Massive.

One famous example was ABACUS 2007-AC1, built by Goldman Sachs. Factbox: How Goldman's ABACUS deal worked

So while you could not buy fire insurance on anyone's house, you could buy a credit default swap against the buyer defaulting on their mortgage. This led to money being loaned to people who were SURE to default on their mortgages.

And that, boys and girls, made a mortgage bubble into a massive derivatives bubble.

All because of a lack of regulation requiring an insurable interest.


So some regulations are good and proper.

More to come...

 

[LordBrownTrout]

Some people want to punish "the rich" just for being rich. They see all rich people as evil doers who must be robbed and their wealth redistributed out of some bizarre sense of "fairness", and they believe the government should decide what is fair.

This is insane. Leaving it to the government to decide what is fair is just plain insane. Do liberals really want Trump and the Republicans deciding what is fair?

You see the giant flaw in that plan now?

So let's apply some common sense..

How does wealth become concentrated in the hands of a few?

One way wealth is accumulated is by inventing a better mousetrap. This kind of entrepreneurship should be encouraged, and the United States excels at promoting this kind of economic growth.

Punishing this behavior is self-defeating, but that is precisely what societies based on marxism do.


There are other means, though, by which wealth is unnaturally concentrated. It is these means which I occasionally address on this forum.

Wealth is unnaturally concentrated through legislation. This legislation is enacted by politicians who are owned by special interests. These politicians are paid a lot of money to enact legislation which favors their paymasters.

If you want true campaign finance reform, if you want truly honest government, you have to take the levers of power away from politicians and return it to the people.

Yes, this means smaller government.

It astonishes me to no end to see people demanding more and more government control over our lives, and then to see the same people complain when that control is captured by special interests.

Concentrating power at the federal level makes the capture of that power easier! I do not know why liberals continue to fail to see this obvious fact.


The two chief methods by which wealth is concentrated is through the tax code and through regulation. You are all probably all tired of hearing me go on and on about tax expenditures and how they are raping all of us in the ass.

If you don't get that by now, you never will.

So now I will talk about regulation. Good and bad regulation, and the stupid things people on both sides of the argument say.

More in the next post...

Well....yeah but we have clowns running both parties that hate the people.

 

[NightFox]

The two chief methods by which wealth is concentrated is through the tax code and through regulation..

In other words GOVERNMENT and GOVERNMENT.

.. but of course we should look to government to remedy wealth & income disparity, after all it's not like government has been used as the primary tool of the few to economically exploit the many since the beginning of recorded history or anything.

 

[g5000]

Some people like to point to lawbreakers to demonstrate that a law they don't like does not work. For example, someone dumps some toxic waste which poisons a whole town, and someone who does not like regulation points to this case to "prove" regulations against toxic waste are useless.

But is that true?

We have laws against murder, and murders still occur. Does that mean laws against murder are useless and have no impact?

There are many example of laws being enacted, and a subsequent drop in the crime the law was intended to affect. The Brady law, which requires federal background checks, was followed by a plummet in the gun homicide rate. Stricter DUI laws led to less alcohol related traffic fatalities.

So the argument that a lawbreaker is proof a law does not work just does not hold water.

There is another reason for laws. We cannot punish someone if there is no law against their behavior. We can't punish a murderer is there is no law against murder.

I can't tell you how many times I heard the apologists for the Wall Street crooks ask, "What laws did they break?" As if that made what they did right!

You can't have it both ways. You can't say, "What laws did they break", and then whine when a law is enacted to punish that behavior.

And so that is how we ended up with Dodd-Frank. Dodd-Frank was the answer to the question, "What laws did they break?"

Keep going...

 

[Jimmy_Chitwood]

Some people want to punish "the rich" just for being rich. They see all rich people as evil doers who must be robbed and their wealth redistributed out of some bizarre sense of "fairness", and they believe the government should decide what is fair.

This is insane. Leaving it to the government to decide what is fair is just plain insane. Do liberals really want Trump and the Republicans deciding what is fair?

You see the giant flaw in that plan now?

So let's apply some common sense..

How does wealth become concentrated in the hands of a few?

One way wealth is accumulated is by inventing a better mousetrap. This kind of entrepreneurship should be encouraged, and the United States excels at promoting this kind of economic growth.

Punishing this behavior is self-defeating, but that is precisely what societies based on marxism do.


There are other means, though, by which wealth is unnaturally concentrated. It is these means which I occasionally address on this forum.

Wealth is unnaturally concentrated through legislation. This legislation is enacted by politicians who are owned by special interests. These politicians are paid a lot of money to enact legislation which favors their paymasters.

If you want true campaign finance reform, if you want truly honest government, you have to take the levers of power away from politicians and return it to the people.

Yes, this means smaller government.

It astonishes me to no end to see people demanding more and more government control over our lives, and then to see the same people complain when that control is captured by special interests.

Concentrating power at the federal level makes the capture of that power easier! I do not know why liberals continue to fail to see this obvious fact.


The two chief methods by which wealth is concentrated is through the tax code and through regulation. You are all probably all tired of hearing me go on and on about tax expenditures and how they are raping all of us in the ass.

If you don't get that by now, you never will.

So now I will talk about regulation. Good and bad regulation, and the stupid things people on both sides of the argument say.

More in the next post...

Why is everybody hatin' on me?

Go get your own.

 

[g5000]

Now suppose you were a shoe shine operation. You borrowed a few dollars from your friends, and set up a shoe shine stand on Wall Street where they wear leather shoes. You then parlayed that into another shoe shine stand, and another, and another, and eventually you owned shoe shine stands all over America.

You're the Shoe Shine King.

Then along comes some young upstart who wants to get in on this action. He sets up a shoe shine stand across from your Wall Street stand. And he has a method of shining shoes which is more efficient and cheaper.

You realize this guy can put a serious bite into your business and may even run you under.

What to do?

Do you retool your business, cut your prices, and improve the service to your customers? That would be the American way.

Or do you buy a few politicians and get them to enact regulations which which only a huge operation like yours can afford so that no start-ups can get off the ground?


That is what bad regulation is. Those are the regulatory costs which need to go. Those are the regulations which unnaturally concentrate wealth.

And no amount of "tax the rich more" bullshit will fix that.

 

[g5000]

The two chief methods by which wealth is concentrated is through the tax code and through regulation..

In other words GOVERNMENT and GOVERNMENT.

Yes.

But my overarching point is that "tax the rich more" does not solve the root cause of the unnatural concentration of wealth. In fact, that "solution" exacerbates the problem.

Taxing the rich more cures the symptom rather than the disease.

 

[g5000]

If you give a politician power over your life, you are providing an incentive for a special interest to purchase that power.

Take away the ability for a politician to control your life, you take away the incentive for a special interest to donate campaign cash to him to do what that special interest wishes.

 

[NightFox]

The two chief methods by which wealth is concentrated is through the tax code and through regulation..

In other words GOVERNMENT and GOVERNMENT.

Yes.

But my overarching point is that "tax the rich more" does not solve the root cause of the unnatural concentration of wealth. In fact, that "solution" exacerbates the problem.

Taxing the rich more cures the symptom rather than the disease.

It doesn't even cure the symptom, "the rich" have complete control over the tax code and it provides a wonderful tool for so many things that benefit them at the expense of the sheeple.

The disease is the centralization of social, economic and political power, the cure is decentralization, all the rest of the jaw wagging is just shiny baubles designed to distract the citizenry from the fact that they're being exploited up, down and sideways.

 

[g5000]

The two chief methods by which wealth is concentrated is through the tax code and through regulation..

In other words GOVERNMENT and GOVERNMENT.

Yes.

But my overarching point is that "tax the rich more" does not solve the root cause of the unnatural concentration of wealth. In fact, that "solution" exacerbates the problem.

Taxing the rich more cures the symptom rather than the disease.

It doesn't even cure the symptom, "the rich" have complete control over the tax code and it provides a wonderful tool for so many things that benefit them at the expense of the sheeple.

The disease is the centralization of social, economic and political power, the cure is decentralization, all the rest of the jaw wagging is just shiny baubles designed to distract the citizenry from the fact that they're being exploited up, down and sideways.

I am saying the same thing.

 

[g5000]

Some people want to punish "the rich" just for being rich. They see all rich people as evil doers who must be robbed and their wealth redistributed out of some bizarre sense of "fairness", and they believe the government should decide what is fair.

This is insane. Leaving it to the government to decide what is fair is just plain insane. Do liberals really want Trump and the Republicans deciding what is fair?

You see the giant flaw in that plan now?

So let's apply some common sense..

How does wealth become concentrated in the hands of a few?

One way wealth is accumulated is by inventing a better mousetrap. This kind of entrepreneurship should be encouraged, and the United States excels at promoting this kind of economic growth.

Punishing this behavior is self-defeating, but that is precisely what societies based on marxism do.


There are other means, though, by which wealth is unnaturally concentrated. It is these means which I occasionally address on this forum.

Wealth is unnaturally concentrated through legislation. This legislation is enacted by politicians who are owned by special interests. These politicians are paid a lot of money to enact legislation which favors their paymasters.

If you want true campaign finance reform, if you want truly honest government, you have to take the levers of power away from politicians and return it to the people.

Yes, this means smaller government.

It astonishes me to no end to see people demanding more and more government control over our lives, and then to see the same people complain when that control is captured by special interests.

Concentrating power at the federal level makes the capture of that power easier! I do not know why liberals continue to fail to see this obvious fact.


The two chief methods by which wealth is concentrated is through the tax code and through regulation. You are all probably all tired of hearing me go on and on about tax expenditures and how they are raping all of us in the ass.

If you don't get that by now, you never will.

So now I will talk about regulation. Good and bad regulation, and the stupid things people on both sides of the argument say.

More in the next post...

Well....yeah but we have clowns running both parties that hate the people.

They don't hate the people so much as they love power. And the way to retain that power is to accept money from special interests to help them get re-elected. And the way to get money from special interests is to do their bidding.

Take away the power, you take away the money incentive.

If a politician has nothing to sell, there is nothing to buy.

The politician sees the people as rubes who have no clue what is going on. Sadly, this assessment is true.

"He has an R after his name, so he can do no wrong!"

 

[OldLady]

Now suppose you were a shoe shine operation. You borrowed a few dollars from your friends, and set up a shoe shine stand on Wall Street where they wear leather shoes. You then parlayed that into another shoe shine stand, and another, and another, and eventually you owned shoe shine stands all over America.

You're the Shoe Shine King.

Then along comes some young upstart who wants to get in on this action. He sets up a shoe shine stand across from your Wall Street stand. And he has a method of shining shoes which is more efficient and cheaper.

You realize this guy can put a serious bite into your business and may even run you under.

What to do?

Do you retool your business, cut your prices, and improve the service to your customers? That would be the American way.

Or do you buy a few politicians and get them to enact regulations which which only a huge operation like yours can afford so that no start-ups can get off the ground?


That is what bad regulation is. Those are the regulatory costs which need to go. Those are the regulations which unnaturally concentrate wealth.

And no amount of "tax the rich more" bullshit will fix that.

Did you skip Dodd Frank?

 

[OldLady]

Some people want to punish "the rich" just for being rich. They see all rich people as evil doers who must be robbed and their wealth redistributed out of some bizarre sense of "fairness", and they believe the government should decide what is fair.

This is insane. Leaving it to the government to decide what is fair is just plain insane. Do liberals really want Trump and the Republicans deciding what is fair?

You see the giant flaw in that plan now?

So let's apply some common sense..

How does wealth become concentrated in the hands of a few?

One way wealth is accumulated is by inventing a better mousetrap. This kind of entrepreneurship should be encouraged, and the United States excels at promoting this kind of economic growth.

Punishing this behavior is self-defeating, but that is precisely what societies based on marxism do.


There are other means, though, by which wealth is unnaturally concentrated. It is these means which I occasionally address on this forum.

Wealth is unnaturally concentrated through legislation. This legislation is enacted by politicians who are owned by special interests. These politicians are paid a lot of money to enact legislation which favors their paymasters.

If you want true campaign finance reform, if you want truly honest government, you have to take the levers of power away from politicians and return it to the people.

Yes, this means smaller government.

It astonishes me to no end to see people demanding more and more government control over our lives, and then to see the same people complain when that control is captured by special interests.

Concentrating power at the federal level makes the capture of that power easier! I do not know why liberals continue to fail to see this obvious fact.


The two chief methods by which wealth is concentrated is through the tax code and through regulation. You are all probably all tired of hearing me go on and on about tax expenditures and how they are raping all of us in the ass.

If you don't get that by now, you never will.

So now I will talk about regulation. Good and bad regulation, and the stupid things people on both sides of the argument say.

More in the next post...

Well....yeah but we have clowns running both parties that hate the people.

They don't hate the people so much as they love power. And the way to retain that power is to accept money from special interests to help them get re-elected. And the way to get money from special interests is to do their bidding.

Take away the power, you take away the money incentive.

If a politician has nothing to sell, there is nothing to buy.

The politician sees the people as rubes who have no clue what is going on. Sadly, this assessment is true.

"He has an R after his name, so he can do no wrong!"

Take away the power? What do you mean by that?

 

[Soggy in NOLA]

What is the point of this thread?

 

[Tehon]

Some people want to punish "the rich" just for being rich. They see all rich people as evil doers who must be robbed and their wealth redistributed out of some bizarre sense of "fairness", and they believe the government should decide what is fair.

This is insane. Leaving it to the government to decide what is fair is just plain insane. Do liberals really want Trump and the Republicans deciding what is fair?

You see the giant flaw in that plan now?

So let's apply some common sense..

How does wealth become concentrated in the hands of a few?

One way wealth is accumulated is by inventing a better mousetrap. This kind of entrepreneurship should be encouraged, and the United States excels at promoting this kind of economic growth.

Punishing this behavior is self-defeating, but that is precisely what societies based on marxism do.


There are other means, though, by which wealth is unnaturally concentrated. It is these means which I occasionally address on this forum.

Wealth is unnaturally concentrated through legislation. This legislation is enacted by politicians who are owned by special interests. These politicians are paid a lot of money to enact legislation which favors their paymasters.

If you want true campaign finance reform, if you want truly honest government, you have to take the levers of power away from politicians and return it to the people.

Yes, this means smaller government.

It astonishes me to no end to see people demanding more and more government control over our lives, and then to see the same people complain when that control is captured by special interests.

Concentrating power at the federal level makes the capture of that power easier! I do not know why liberals continue to fail to see this obvious fact.


The two chief methods by which wealth is concentrated is through the tax code and through regulation. You are all probably all tired of hearing me go on and on about tax expenditures and how they are raping all of us in the ass.

If you don't get that by now, you never will.

So now I will talk about regulation. Good and bad regulation, and the stupid things people on both sides of the argument say.

More in the next post...

Well....yeah but we have clowns running both parties that hate the people.

They don't hate the people so much as they love power. And the way to retain that power is to accept money from special interests to help them get re-elected. And the way to get money from special interests is to do their bidding.

Take away the power, you take away the money incentive.

If a politician has nothing to sell, there is nothing to buy.

The politician sees the people as rubes who have no clue what is going on. Sadly, this assessment is true.

"He has an R after his name, so he can do no wrong!"

If you take away their power then who will have the power to write laws that are good and proper?

 

[g5000]

Now suppose you were a shoe shine operation. You borrowed a few dollars from your friends, and set up a shoe shine stand on Wall Street where they wear leather shoes. You then parlayed that into another shoe shine stand, and another, and another, and eventually you owned shoe shine stands all over America.

You're the Shoe Shine King.

Then along comes some young upstart who wants to get in on this action. He sets up a shoe shine stand across from your Wall Street stand. And he has a method of shining shoes which is more efficient and cheaper.

You realize this guy can put a serious bite into your business and may even run you under.

What to do?

Do you retool your business, cut your prices, and improve the service to your customers? That would be the American way.

Or do you buy a few politicians and get them to enact regulations which which only a huge operation like yours can afford so that no start-ups can get off the ground?


That is what bad regulation is. Those are the regulatory costs which need to go. Those are the regulations which unnaturally concentrate wealth.

And no amount of "tax the rich more" bullshit will fix that.

Did you skip Dodd Frank?

See post 6.

 

[g5000]

Some people want to punish "the rich" just for being rich. They see all rich people as evil doers who must be robbed and their wealth redistributed out of some bizarre sense of "fairness", and they believe the government should decide what is fair.

This is insane. Leaving it to the government to decide what is fair is just plain insane. Do liberals really want Trump and the Republicans deciding what is fair?

You see the giant flaw in that plan now?

So let's apply some common sense..

How does wealth become concentrated in the hands of a few?

One way wealth is accumulated is by inventing a better mousetrap. This kind of entrepreneurship should be encouraged, and the United States excels at promoting this kind of economic growth.

Punishing this behavior is self-defeating, but that is precisely what societies based on marxism do.


There are other means, though, by which wealth is unnaturally concentrated. It is these means which I occasionally address on this forum.

Wealth is unnaturally concentrated through legislation. This legislation is enacted by politicians who are owned by special interests. These politicians are paid a lot of money to enact legislation which favors their paymasters.

If you want true campaign finance reform, if you want truly honest government, you have to take the levers of power away from politicians and return it to the people.

Yes, this means smaller government.

It astonishes me to no end to see people demanding more and more government control over our lives, and then to see the same people complain when that control is captured by special interests.

Concentrating power at the federal level makes the capture of that power easier! I do not know why liberals continue to fail to see this obvious fact.


The two chief methods by which wealth is concentrated is through the tax code and through regulation. You are all probably all tired of hearing me go on and on about tax expenditures and how they are raping all of us in the ass.

If you don't get that by now, you never will.

So now I will talk about regulation. Good and bad regulation, and the stupid things people on both sides of the argument say.

More in the next post...

Well....yeah but we have clowns running both parties that hate the people.

They don't hate the people so much as they love power. And the way to retain that power is to accept money from special interests to help them get re-elected. And the way to get money from special interests is to do their bidding.

Take away the power, you take away the money incentive.

If a politician has nothing to sell, there is nothing to buy.

The politician sees the people as rubes who have no clue what is going on. Sadly, this assessment is true.

"He has an R after his name, so he can do no wrong!"

Take away the power? What do you mean by that?

I'll give you an example.

If you give a politician the power to enact tax breaks, then you provide an incentive for powerful interests to bribe him to give them tax breaks.

Tax breaks have to be compensated for by raising tax rates on everyone else.

Take away the power to enact tax breaks, you take away the incentive to bribe. This is the ONLY way to realize effective campaign finance reform.

Take away the power to enact tax breaks for special interests, you ensure a level playing field for every taxpayer, and lower tax rates for everyone.

 

[g5000]

What is the point of this thread?

The point of this thread is to provide the conservative point of view on regulations, and why we need smaller government.