Can’t help it, I think regulations are a good thing.
I like the fact that our government regulates our food to make sure it’s not filled with e coli.
I like knowing what ingredients are in the food. I like restaurants to not have rats. I think regulations to make sure our cars are safe are a good idea. I like having doctors and lawyers and electricians certified by the government and subject to regulations about what they can do. I like requiring only adults to buy alcohol and cigarettes. I like regulations about workplace safety, and prohibitions against discrimination, and housing restrictions that prevent someone from putting a pig farm next door to me.
Some people, however, think that the “regulation” is a bad word. They will use some example where a regulation has gone too far and then say “See? Therefore, we should get rid of them all.”
Both extremes are bad. “No regulations” is anarchy. “Complete regulation” is tyranny. Usually we’re pretty good about finding a reasonable spot between the two, but anyone who says “all regulation is bad” or “all regulation is good” is deluded.
Take financial regulations. From the time of the founding of the United States, we had a recession or financial crisis on the average of once every seventeen years. There was the Panic of 1819, the 1837 Crisis, the Panic of 1873, the Panic of 1893, the 1907 Banker’s Panic, and so on up to the Great Depression. Then Franklin Roosevelt put in controls and restrictions on Wall Street and banking and lo and behold, no depressions and no recessions for fifty years. Reagan comes in and removes those and bang! The S&L crisis, the 2001 recession, the 2007 Mortgage crisis, and the 2008 Bush collapse.
Regulations can be good things.
So no, you won’t get me jumping on your libertarian view that all regulations are bad, any more than you’ll get me jumping on a communist view that everything must be regulated.
I love you “middle ground” guys. Don’t actually have an opinion on what you believe. Everything is about being safely in the middle – regardless of the fact that the middle is always moving – you just like to call everyone with an opinion “extreme”.
How about actually fully vomiting to something you believe, regardless of where the middle is at the moment.
There’s a reason Porsche uses the slogan, “No compromise.” Standards require taking a stand, otherwise your position is weak and pack-oriented. Not based in anything except always being safely in the middle.
Compromise is not a good thing inherently – it just means you don’t want to take a stand.
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No, it means you’re a reasonable person who understands that there may be two sides to an issue and it is better to get 50% of what you want than be stubborn and get 0%. I’ll bet you compromise all the time in your marriage, Dan. And you probably do at your job, too.
Some things should never be compromised (honesty, integrity). Issues, laws, and regulations are not those things.
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Sorry, but 50% of freedom is just not nearly enough. Compromise is another word for lowering standards and not sticking to your guns. Too much compromise is why things are so bad politically, IMO. Too many freedoms have been compromised, and not enough politicians stick to what they actually believe – they are busy playing the game, and compromising in one area to try to get someone else to compromise in another. It is not okay to compromise a little good for a little evil. Screw that. Since the middle is always moving, trying to be in the middle means you don’t stand for anything, really.
I compromise a lot less in my job than you might think. I will fire a client in a second if they don’t want to do things right – I don’t care how much they are paying me, if they want me to do things that I know to be poor, I won’t do it. (And marriage is an entirely different issue and has nothing to do with this conversation – at least from my perspective.)
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