Stoneage Ramblings

By John R. Stone

How much regulation is “just right” and how much is “too much.”

It is probably a different view depending upon whether or not the person or business is being regulated or a person benefitting from regulation.

We have regulations for just about everything under the sun. And we have them because somewhere along the line a person’s behavior or that of a business’s behavior required a minimum standard for something.

The state, for example, has water quality standards for public drinking water. That seems to make sense. There are standards for sewer systems and discharge from those systems. And list goes on.

The reason we have to have all of these rules and regulations is because not everybody can agree on what is fair or good for society.

We have stop signs because people choose not to follow right of way laws at intersections. We have the pollution laws because there are people who would dump anything anywhere. We have zoning laws in cities because there are those who care not for their neighbors when it comes to what they put up or allow to sit on their property.

If everybody would simply follow the Golden Rule, Do unto others as you would have them to do unto you, we could have a lot fewer rules and laws.

If you try to get an answer to what percentage of the people break a law and poke around on the internet for an answer the percentage rages from about 70% to 100%.

Here’s five of common ones according to one website: Using someone else’s Wi-Fi, owning a permanent marker, downloading or watching hacked movies online, using fake names on the internet and betting with friends.

The marker one probably catches your eye, in many cities especially it is illegal to carry a permanent marker or spray can of paint, something enacted to try to prevent vandalism such as graffiti on walls or buildings.

There are others more common, such as our driving habits like going over speed limit while driving your car, rolling through a stop sign, parking in the wrong place at the wrong time and a bunch of other offenses.

The problem with all of these rules, regulations and laws is that they are meaningless if they are not enforced. And enforcing them means we have to have an enforcement system that means inspectors or police, a court system to allow people to appeal the enforcement action and then determine guilt or innocence, and a system for incarceration for serious crimes or merely to collect fines or observe and enforce probationary penalties.

Sometimes the regulation is in place but not enforced and it can have tragic consequences. A big example is the financial bust of 2008-09. Some financial whiz  decided to package home mortgages into large bonds and sell them as Triple A rated. Soon many were doing it.

If the Securities and Exchange Commission, a Federal agency, had paid close attention many of these bonds were not close to AAA. Rating agencies had been fooled.

This got so crazy that people were selling people houses they could not afford so that the mortgages could be packed into a bond and sold.

Of course the bonds started to lose value when people with $20,000 incomes couldn’t make payments on $500,000 home mortgages. The stock market crashed, big companies like General Motors and the former Chrysler Corporation filed bankruptcy, and banks folded.

We have laws for a reason, to protect ourselves from those who would steal from us or hurt us in a variety of ways.

Have you ever thought about how much we spend at many levels to protect ourselves from those who would take something from us? Isn’t that a shame, that we have to do that?