One of the most significant differences between conservatives and liberals is their approach to government regulation. Regulation affects numerous aspects of industry, finance, healthcare and the environment. Put simply, conservatives deplore regulation in almost any form and liberals champion regulation as a curb against a host of societal ills.
What does the government attempt to regulate? The goals of government regulation are generally to ensure that the public welfare is safeguarded, that business is conducted fairly, that everyone has equal opportunity in the marketplace, that environmental and climate conditions are protected and that the economy does not experience dramatic ups and downs.
Conservatives despise regulation because they believe it is costly to implement, interferes with the normal flow of business and commerce, and places excessive restrictions on enterprises. They believe it contradicts and damages the basic tenet of capitalism, the free market. Conservatives trust in the long-term good intentions of businesses and society to self-govern and moderate their behavior to achieve the same goals that government regulation targets.
Liberals point to numerous historical events – stock market bubbles, monopolies, pollution, banking and investment fraud, recessions, extreme income and wealth inequality, and other societal ills – as proof that government regulation is necessary to curb the excesses and injustices that naturally occur as a result of human behavior.
No one loves regulation. We all chafe at having someone else tell us what we can or can’t do. But it is clear to any serious student of political reality that some level of government regulation is necessary in a society. The question is how much. It is the duty and challenge of our elected officials to determine how much government regulation to enact.
A reasonable approach to this issue would be for government officials to make use of independent expertise and the massive amount of available data and history to determine how to proceed. But instead, most of our representatives seem locked into rigid, pre-conceived notions and are heavily influenced by powerful, well-funded interest groups.
In the current political environment, if a politician wants to keep his or her position, then he or she must find significant financial support, and that support generally comes from wealthy donors or political action committees that have a very specific agenda. This makes it difficult for elected officials to make decisions based on reason and data.
In an ideal world, we would task working groups of independent experts to propose the best possible set of regulations that would strike a balance between the protection of society and the freedom of the marketplace. But sadly, in today’s partisan politics, even the mere selection of any group of experts would become a savage battle that would no doubt end in paralysis and a waste of time.
And there is the fact that most of these issues are multi-variable and complex. The concepts have elements of science and mathematics, but they are not physics or chemistry. They are subject to interpretation and when human beings interpret, they bring all of their prejudices to bear.
So, what we end up with is a seesaw battle of regulation and cancellation of regulation in successive administrations and congresses, as each group attempts to correct what it portrays as excessive meddling by the other side. It is no doubt a colossal waste of money and effort, but probably inevitable. Such is the contradictory nature of human society.
