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Originally Posted by loquitur
What's apparent to me is that you're making generalizations and advocating government action based on the generalization. That might be the only way policy gets made, but surely you see that that underscores what a blunt instrument government is: you make policy for everyone based on what a subset does.
Rekna, you're presuming there aren't any other sanctions. There are. And last time I looked, WalMart wasn't going begging for workers. It's a big economy, about $15 trillion last I looked, or something like that. No one HAS to work at WalMart.
As for Enron, there is no amount of regulation that would have stopped that. I had a conv once with the then-head of the criminal division at the Justice Dept, and he admitted to me that even if Sarbanes-Oxley had been in place 10 years ago, it would not have stopped the Enron fraud and it would not have stopped the WorldCom fraud. There is no legislation or regulation that will stop bad people who are intent on doing bad things from doing them (that's why we still have murderers despite laws against it). We do have fraud laws, and those laws were applied, and the bad guys are now in jail. But I'll be damned if I'll ever advocated putting all sorts of obstacles in front of the GEs and Amgens of the world merely because Scott Sullivan and Andy Fastow are crooks. That's lunacy, and a recipe for killing the economy.
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I would suggest you are also making generalizations. There are myriad labor regulations that have protected milllions of workers, from child labor abuses to equal employment opportunty, beyond those covered by workers comp.
Banking and securities regulations may not have stopped the Enron excesses, but have protected the small investor and ordinary worker trying to save.
Environmental regulations are hardly protecting only a subset of the people. Safe drinking water, clean air and waste management regs have made a cleaner environment for us all.
Your made earlier comments that regulations aren't amenable to democratic control and leaving it to agencies to make policy (as opposed to implementing it) is anti-democratic. The agencies are a way for Congress to punt on the hard decisions by giving them to people who aren't accountable. They do the same thing with the courts
As an attorney, you should know that many laws require explanatory or clarifty regulations in otder to be implemented. Unless you would prefer that Congress vote on every possible scenario when enacting a piece of legislation . The more appropriate way, if Congress does not like the way some regs are impemented they have two ways to rectify thse purported regulatory abuses - funding and oversight.
There are undoubtedly many excessive, redundant and generally unnecessary regulations. Sunset provisions would help alot, but on the whole, I would suggest, the accomplishments and benefits of our regulatory system far outweigh the burdens.
BTW...in 1999, Clinton signed a bi-partisan bill called
the Regulatory Right to Know Act. It requires OMB to annually submit a report to Congress that provides a cost-benefit analysis of federal regulations, analyze the impact of federal rules on small businesses, the private sector, government, wages and economic growth (I agree it doesnt address "individual" rights), and offer recommendations for regulatory reform.
The annual reports have consistently reported that the benefits of regulations exceed the costs. The
2006 report (pdf) noted that "the benefits of major regulations from 1992 to 2005 exceeded the costs by over threefold."