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.