It doesn't break down for me. Individuals are free to make their own decisions and are responsible for the decisions they make. That some aren't, or seem like they aren't, doesn't mean the rest of us have to sacrifice our liberties for them. If you make a mistake, YOU deal with the consequences. If you believe yourself to be a victim of a crime, you can have your day in court.
Agreed. It might be chaos at first (once the nanny state let go), but once companies got sued to death or were allowed to fail, they'd learn they had to follow acceptable standards.
yeah it's a meme, just go ahead and point out how the crash wouldn't have happened had GS still been in place. And when you say it's an attempt by the financial industry to get back to business as usual, that might be true, but in my eyes they shouldn't exist right now. I have a huge problem with the bailouts and think the banks should have all gone tits up, you wealth redistribution types would have seen the largest transfer of wealth in human history as these banks assets were auctioned off during bankruptcy.. and i forgot to mention, opportunity.
Honestly, I don't think so. They can't inspect everything and every now and then we get recalls on certain food products. Would that number go up if there were no inspections, probably, but like tsing just pointed out, the company will suffer. It is not in the best interest of a food company to sell bad food, or a drug company to sell bad drugs, because they are fucked if they hurt or kill people. I do think the govt should have qualified personnel in their employment who can investigate these cases as they happen. They also can and do set standards, or regulations that must be followed or are punishable both monetarily and criminally.
I'm with you AAA. Mortgage finance was the big culprit but I've come to believe banks need to be out of things like the derivatives markets, leveraged markets and the creation of exotic securities. It's too easy for them to get into big trouble. If they want to be a bank - be a bank. If the bank grows beyond a certain size, make it split into two separate banks. If they want to be a securities brokerage - don't be a bank.
The fly by night operator, the quick buck guy, doesn't care about lost future sales and doesn't expect to get caught and brought to justice anyway, so a thousand kids poisoned by tainted Chinese milk is not worth achieving ideological purity. Random checks, informed by good risk assessment (which is the method now) is worth the money spent.
Ok, i don't have a huge problem with it, and don't really know shit about how it actually works. There are agencies on the other hand that are complete wastes of money. The SEC is one of them, they are fucking useless and don't prevent anything, it is nothing more than a waste of 1B dollars/year. I think the governments focus should be on reacting to crimes/violations, and regulating trade, not trying to prevent everything that could possibly go wrong, because they can't, and it hurts those who are playing by the rules unnecessarily.