A conversation between Business and Government

Business: We're going to put cocaine in our cans of green beans to make people buy more of them.

Government: Nope, we're making a law that says you can't do that. Its 1 sentence long. Businesses can't put cocaine into their green bean cans.

Business: O.K. we'll put heroin in instead.

Government: (Adds to legislation) Nope, we've added to the bill and it now outlaws any controlled substances in green beans.

Business: Any? We need to use pesticides though.

Government: (Adds to legislation) O.K. we will allow for pesticides.

(Negotiating continues, now were 100 pages into the bill)

Government: Well, you're gonna have to put a label on the can of green beans detailing EVERYTHING that's in it.

Business: O.K. we'll put it on the inside of the can.

Government: (Adds to legislation) No we've amended the bill to force you to put it on the outside.

Business: Tiny microscopic print then.

G: Must be readable size

B: We'll write it in sanskrit.

G: No sanskrit, needs to be english.

B: What about our spanish customers.

G: OK we'll allow spanish.

(Negotiations continue for a while, bill is 1000 pages long now)

G: No you can't use invisible ink.

B: O.K. deal, but we get to raise the agricultural subsidies right?

G: Sure

B: Phew, I'm glad that's over. Look at all that money people are going to lose when we have to meet these new regulations. Hey guys, can you believe this, it took the government 1000 pages of legislation to get labels on cans of green beans. Look how incompetent they are!



I've been seeing a lot of links to how many pages of legislation have been passed recently. The "spin" on this information is usually, look how inept, or controlling the government is. I challenge this notion. I say the length of our bills has almost nothing to do with how inept, or controlling the government is, but rather how slippery and conniving the businessmen they deal with are. I'm not talking mom and pop stores, or your local Mcdonald's franchisee, I'm talking about the businesses with enough lawyers to not only cause the legislation to need to be this long, but to also "sell" it as a fault of someone else.

 

I say it's both.

 

In our current system, business must pay a great deal to politicians to buy their cooperation. This is why the fat cats have convinced the right-wingers that Big Government is bad. Of course it’s bad, there are too many enforcement agencies to buy off.

Bribery would be considerably less expensive in the small government wanted by the right wing. This would help fill the pockets of the fat cats much faster since there would be far, far fewer officials’ palms to grease.

Big Business and the one percent would be free to screw the workers and consumers, sell dangerous, low quality products, pollute the environment, and, most important to conservatives and neoconservatives, pay their employees slave wages.

It is an overwhelming fantasy of the right wing that the very rich are kindly benefactors to the working class. Where they got this idea is anyone’s guess, because history proved long ago the exact opposite is true.Still, the conservatives and neoconservatives want to hand control of our government over to a small number of the super rich in their misguided belief it would cure all of our nation’s problems.

People of reason cannot understand why right-wingers want to be subjugated by a handful of malicious, greedy, and power hungry individuals bent on taking all they can from the lower classes. It is not average citizens that cause economies to collapse, or wars that kill millions, no, it is the very people worshiped by the right wing as “job creators”.

 

Brilliant example of how laws and regulations are created to protect the public. Bravo.

 

But, according to the right wing, laws kill jobs.

 

Is this sarcasm?

 

First of all, let's cut the crap and say that the democrats are just as easily bought and paid for as the republicans are, one need look no further than Tom Steyer to see that. You can point your finger at the GOP all you want but the truth is that both parties are guilty of cronyism and corruption.

As far as bigger gov't is concerned, I am not sure whether bribery would be more expensive or not if gov't was smaller. Not seeing the logic there, I do believe that if the gov't had less money to spend then maybe there would be less FWA, and it would be harder to hide the corruption. I will say this, it's about time the gov't did a better job of spending our money more effectively and efficiently than they are now. I don't want to give 'em one more dime until they do that.

 

Lack of laws kill... literally. I remember Enron creating blackouts across California in order to increase electricity prices and contracts. Thankfully, new regulations will prevent such a thing in the future. State ownership would be even better for essential services like electricity.

 

No. You gave a very clear and concise example of how corporations force the government to protect the public from those corporations.

 

You're assuming I'm a leftie, because I don't trust business to have absolute power. I don't trust anyone with absolute power, including the government. Explain to me how it works oh great economist. If your so knowledgeable on these subjects why are you wasting your time on some hack political forum instead of fixing the problem?

 

The labelling, freedom for the customer to know what they're buying, etc, is all fine, though honestly if people want to buy coke-laced beans I don't see why I have the right to tell them no.

 

I guess I can agree with that as long as the guy doesn't rob me to feed his cocaine-laced green bean addiction.

 

Well lucky for you we have the fascinating concept called "theft" that people can be jailed for.

 

Yeah, but unlucky for me we just legalized cocaine-laced green beans that will dramatically increase the chance that he might want to rob me and become jailed. I'd rather just skip the whole robbing part with or without punishment.

 

If cocaine laced green beans are going to be legal then competition will quickly make them affordable (Cocaine is not hard to grow), and if they're both legal and affordable I'm becoming a Vegan.

This is one of the silliest theads I've seen on here yet, but a good illustration of the truth of what Obama said, (and seems to have forgotten since) "We don't want big government nor small government, We want GOOD government". This is reality, folks, there are on panaceas.

 

Not me. I wouldn't eat a greenbean with or without the coke even if it were being fed to me by a dominatrix in 6 inch heels.

I would not call it the silliest I have seen, but I would give it honorable mention in the category.

 

Bah, cocaine-laced green beans is comedic gold, or at least silver, I won't settle for an honorable mention, and to your first point, if you were a coke-addict you might find yourself doing all sorts of things that you wouldn't think you would do, the least embarrassing of which would be eating green beans

 

Sorry, Honorable Mention was me being charitable. It really more deserves to share the Spirit Award--you know the one they give at awards day to the kid who missed 164 days of school because he forgot to wear his helmet and fell and busted his skull in the bathroom because, as we know, everybody gets an award.

Trust me, being coked out of my mind would likely give me better judgment. The part of the brain that processes embarrassment became overloaded and short-circuited well before I got my sheepskin.

 

Hmmm ... being high on cocaine-laced green beans would likely give you better judgement. Interesting. I can't argue with that logic.

 

Because I've had to listen to addled nonsense from "knowitall" laymen like you my entire career, got tired of it, and do this as opposed to being rude IRL with real people.

 

Let me get this right ... You have the macro-economic knowledge to actually help fix the world's problems, but your run-ins with laypeople have angered you so much that instead of using this knowledge on the global stage to fix the world, you instead write on this hack political forum in an effort to be kinder to those same lay people you abhor?

I think it much more likely that your inflating your level of knowledge.

 

In that case, I guess I'll just accept your original offer of an honorable mention. No take-backs, I earned that green ribbon of participation.

 

It will look good pinned to your



Now, as for the original pseudo purpose (I think) of this thread, the cost of regulatory compliance is overstated because there is no reasonable way to know what costs/losses would result with non-compliant operation if the laws did not exist either in terms of litigation or lost revenue. I am pretty sure the first time a finger showed up in my coke can, there would be both litigation and a significant drop in sales for coke products (well except maybe coked up greenbeans).

 

If you don't know what the costs/losses would be for non-compliance then how can you know if the cost of compliance is overstated? Besides, what difference does it make what non-compliance costs are, I don't see what that has to do with how much it costs to comply. Say it costs a company $500k to comply with all the laws and regulations; then let's assume costs would have been a cool million had the company failed to comply. Then let's change the cost on non-compliance down to $300k, somebody dropped a lawsuit. Either way the company paid $500k in compliance cost.

I would imagine that when businesses say the costs of compliance is "X", chances are that is an inflated figure. Why? Cuz they want to influence lawmakers and presidents to reduce their cost of compliance so they can get a higher profit. It is not nothing however, and it is indisputable that if you increase the number of business regulations then you are not helping the business climate thrive. That's not to say that some regulations are essential to protect consumers and competitors and everyone else from unsafe products and unfair business practices. We just need to make sure the laws/regulations we have are really needed and that cheaper alternative solutions have been considered. Also I think we have to do a better job of cracking down on the crooks and cheaters. I'm not sure we really needed Dodd-Frank, maybe we needed to do a better job of regulating Wall Street.

 

1 odd line of thinking I've heard several times on this forum, is that the laws themselves aren't needed because businesses would naturally do the right thing lest people stopped buying their products. While I think this unlikely to happen, I always wonder about the logic here. If these businesses would continue to behave in this manner without the regulation, than how is it costing anything to comply?