I don't understand Warren's fetish for regulation. Why is she singing the praises of regulation so much? Who is attacking regulations so much to elicit such committed defenses for it? I think what people are skeptical of is what they perceive to be - and in some cases experience - excessive regulation.
It's just bizarre:
"It's thanks to federal agencies that no one has to worry that those white pills are baking soda instead of antibiotics or that the paint on the baby’s crib is laced with lead,”
and
If as many people were dying of a mysterious disease as innocent bystanders are dying from firearms, a cure would be our top priority,” Warren said. “But we don’t even have good data on gun violence. Why? Because the NRA and the gun industry lobby made it their goal to prevent any serious effort to document the violence.”
Really?
I see plenty of good date on gun violence. Plenty. It's just that, I think, Warren may not like the facts she's reading. Just saying.
As for financial regulations, jesus, let's not go overboard. I'm not crazy about some of the practices but her consistent use of the word "rigged" is getting tired. No one is forcing people to take out credit cards or take out bad mortgages. At the end of the day, the bush stops with YOU. ME.
She can litter the world with all the unicorns and regulations she wants but the nanny-state will never be able to legislate its way to eradicating the stupid.
The problem I have with the Warren's of this world is they over play federal agencies as a positive force. While I don't doubt some of it is necessary and still more even practical but there are many that simply aren't.
Take my situation in daycare. Prior to $7 dollar a day daycare, the market was pretty much a private and semi-private one. Not everyone could afford it. As is the case with so many services and products in life.
The PQ government decided it was time to create a system whereby everyone had access to it. Because we needed more egalitarianism we couldn't afford.
Of course, subsidized daycare is nothing but a bureaucratic, corrupt and inchorent and expensive mess now.
Oh what a surprise.
With it came the involvement of the state and the expansion of still more government agencies. The government provides "philosophical" literature that I must adhere to worth probably no more than the lint on a sweater made in Moldova.
It further enforces a giant and mercurial book of codes so filled with grey matter, physicists wouldn't touch it choosing rather to break their heads on quantum theories.
To Warren, this would be "evidence" of how regulation provides advanced, progressive and intelligent daycare. Prior to this, the world was but a dark, dingy world of private drivel that was "rigged."
How did we live! Animals!
I can tell you, with confidence, there is no such thing. Most of regulations on the books are pointless and even inefficient if not impractical. Most of it was written for CPE's but enforced upon private daycares which creates immediate friction and unfair pressures and practices. Private daycares don't have the luxiry of getting a fat subsidy to pay for a lot of the stuff, yet we can be cited if we don't comply.
Little of it is evidence based. I know because I ask for data to which they readily admit there is none. Basically it all amounts to "fuck you, because we say so."
Government regulation in daycare is (mostly) an illusion. I kinda get some of the codes but most of it keeps you mired in unnecessary red tape. Between all the "taker" agencies that collect from you, it's not that far fetched to joke about dealing with the Politburo.
We "comply" to avoid a citation and not because it makes things "better."
Most of the practices that go into creating and maintaining a good day care is straight forward, basic and common sense. If you can't do it, then you're in the wrong business.
They like to point out the bad cases in private daycare, but won't tell you there are plenty of people on the subsifdized side who are in it to get the subsidy and don't necessarily care about daycare.
It's part of Marois's pseudo-communistic bull shit about there being "many complaints with private daycare." No shit. People tend to complain more when they pay $40. When they pay $7 they put up with all sorts of crap.
It's only normal.
****
Speaking of egotistical nanny-staters, some sanity was restored in NYC when a judge struck down Bloomberg's bad on sodas. True, it was mostly based on a technicality and less to defend the consumers right to choose but a win is a win.
Too many unelected health bodies are having a say on how we eat.
They have available to them a ready audience in people like Bloomberg.
"I think that it is incumbent on government to tell people what they're doing to themselves and let people make their own decisions," said Mayor Bloomberg on the Late Show with David Letterman the evening the ban was overturned. "So our job is to educate people[.]”
I would firmly counter no it's not "incumbent" nor is it necessarily their jobs to "educate" people.
I can make educated choices on my own.
I don't have that much trust in strangers.
Bloomberg told Letterman that he thought it was "We(government's.. Or maybe he meant politicians') duty to educate people and then let them make the choice." Except that, by edict, he banned a choice (larger than 16 oz sugary drinks).
ReplyDeleteIt's the government way: tax it and/or regulate it.