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The Pit Politics Thread

Knight said:
I assume you're referring to Pb?

Lead mining companies, refineries, and factories that use lead in production do not monetarily benefit from regulations on lead. I imagine the EPA has done to lead what it has done to so many other construction materials; over regulated it to the point of not being a viable option for many suitable uses.
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Those people benefit from lead not being in the environment. Society benefits from not having to bear the costs of lead exposure.
 
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Hey Knight, don't you have a brother in the asbestos industry? You should call him up and ask him about the various beneficial applications of that product.
 
I do like Obama's support of beer. I know he's on my side on that.
 
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This thread has potential to be a place for good political discussion, but it could easily be derailed. Let's make an effort to avoid sarcasm, name calling, etc. I never read the politics threads b/c they're fucking awful, but it'd be nice to have a courteous and intelligent place to discuss these issues. Thank you to the mods for allowing this.

At a very basic and general level, I think even most right-leaning economists would agree that some regulations are necessary, and actual improve the healthy functioning of a free market economy. A total laissez faire approach would only work if all costs were internalized by all economic actors. In the real world, that isn't the case. With no laws against it, a rational chemical firm will dump all their waste into a river because that is the cheapest way to dispose of it, and they don't have to internalize the costs (damages and destruction) created by these actions. This hypothetical firm will make inefficient decisions because they can't do an accurate cost-benefit analysis, underestimating and failing to internalize the costs of their actions. Good regulations seek to correct this problem, forcing firms to internalize all costs, and thus make more efficient decisions. Obviously, this is all pretty general stuff, but it's worth acknowledging that regulations are not all bad, and even hardcore free market people should accept that basic truth.

Most real world policy debates are more complicated than this, and raise questions of line drawing. I'm more liberal and will likely vote for Obama, but I can look at a state like California and see the terrible consequences of excessive regulation.
 
Regulation is so bad in that our economy would place us as the eighth/ninth largest economy as an independent nation.
 
Are you referring to my California comment? I don't understand how that relates to what I'm saying.
 
You mentioned had "excessive regulations". What I said was in spite of those "excessive regulations", CA still has the 8th/9th biggest economy in the world.

CA is surrounded by very low regulation states of NV and AZ. Those two states have cheaper everything than CA, yet they haven't made serious inroads.

If the regs were so bad, many more companies would have left.
 
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