Regulations can be both good and bad
Often you’ll hear the right wing pro-business folks pissing and moaning about the scourge regulations.
Here’s the thing, they’re not always wrong. There are a lot of stupid regulations — regulations that protect businesses and industries at the expense of potential competitors or the general public. They might have been passed with good intentions which went awry, or could have been put in place as a political favor to a certain constituency. For example, not being able to get an ride share at an airport to protect taxis is a stupid regulation.
That said, there are many regulations you would not want to live without. These regulations are in the public interest — they protect and/or benefit the people, such as building codes, child labor laws, and food safety rules.
So yes, there are good regulations and bad regulations, and there is a difference. You can like some and not others, it’s not a zero-sum game.
So how do we know if we have a good regulation or a bad regulation?
Simple.
Who benefits?
Who benefits from it’s existence? Or who benefits from it not existing? Does it benefit the people, or does it benefit the industry?
You’ll often hear the right-wingers call the regulations that benefit the people at the expense of industry “job killing” regulations. It’s a powerful message meant to stoke economic anxiety. But we never hear the counter-argument: if the absence of a particular regulation kills people, then isn’t that a good trade off?
Killing jobs is better than killing people, no?
Like what you’re reading? Get involved today at https://www.elephantgun.org
