Posted by
Andrews on Wednesday, May 13, 2009 10:07:44 PM
One of my favorite topics throughout the past year has been the way the government blames the private sector for its own shortcomings, especially its fondness for blaming the failure of government programs upon "deregulation", regardless of how little real deregulation took place. So I was obviously quite please to see
Thomas Sowell's most recent post, in which he says precisely the same thing I have been saying for so long:
After virtually every disaster created by Beltway politicians you
can hear the sound of feet scurrying for cover in Washington, see
fingers pointing in every direction away from Washington, and watch all
sorts of scapegoats hauled up before Congressional committees to be
denounced on television for the disasters created by members of the
committee who are lecturing them.
The word repeated endlessly in these political charades is
"deregulation." The idea is that it was a lack of government
supervision which allowed "greed" in the private sector to lead the
nation into crises that only our Beltway saviors can solve.
It would be quite tedious to list all the posts I have made on the same topic, so let me just point those interested to my first post on the topic,
"
How To Blame the Free Market", in which I wrote:
I have noticed that capitalism often takes the blame for regulatory
schemes gone wrong. I can understand why politicians would want this
outcome, as regulation increases their powers, while deregulation
limits their sphere of influence. What puzzles me is why so many simply
accept the self-serving arguments of the regulators.
If you wish to find more, you can examine the list of posts contained in the postscript to "
Living Large During the Good Times", the titles should make clear which are relevant.
POSTSCRIPT
Rather than add another, redundant post, let me add that John Stossel repeats my argument from "
Counter Productive" in
his latest post, basically that no one needs to protect cattle or mink or wheat, but there is a shortage of many things, such as rock samphire, which may not be legally harvested or farmed. (My other writing on endangered species can be found in "
Endangered Species", "
Environmentalists Versus Evolution" and "
Funny Numbers". A list of my writing on environmental questions in general is found at the end of "
Interesting Evidence".)