Originally Posted by
Dr. Love
Deregulation is pointless without the reintroduction of risk. Banks know they can gamble and get bailed out with taxpayer money AND not be tried for their crimes. Take away that safety net and I am positive they act differently. There are a lot of companies that aren't highly regulated AND don't have that safety net that are successful (and a lot that fail).
My own company's vertical recently became more heavily regulated. It cost us a fair amount of money to become and stay compliant, and a lot of decisions we make now are based in part on how the government has worded/ruled on certain standards.
The interesting part is that it hurt our competition much, much worse, and ultimately drove many of them out of business. Now we don't have much competition... if you want services like ours, you're going to have to pay whatever we want to charge, and no one can really get into the market because it's just too difficult anymore unless you're entrenched, like we are.
I don't think that Ron Paul would say every regulation should be rescinded, but I do think he would say that regulations should be just and smart. Liberty is about being able to do whatever you want AS LONG AS it doesn't harm anyone else. What the banks did in 2007/2008 was very harmful to a lot of people, and they should be held responsible for any criminal actions which they committed, and there should be laws against harmful and deceptive practices. Those that break the law should be tried and sent to jail.
Once the government cracks down on Wall Street and shows them that they will let them go bankrupt, and they will send CEOs and other employees to jail, and that NO ONE is above the law, then they will change their ways. But as long as we allow the banks to lobby and influence the officials that then write the regulations on them, or worse, let them write the regulations themselves, nothing will change. Remove government control/influence, you remove the motivation for people to corrupt the government to control that influence.
There should be laws, but they should be targeted, and be intelligent, and be limited.