Fellas,
Ahhh, I'm glad to see this come up again, but under a different topic. A couple of months ago I got going on a thread about how Wal-Mart is driving jobs to China, big-time. And about how if anything is to change this, then somebody in the government will have to weigh in and change the ground rules.
This contributed to a big row, and I ended up making some heated replies I later regretted. I wish I hadn't done that and will be more mannerly tonight, out of repect for the board.
Yet here is the same thing again, and it's still an important issue. The whole debate about the rightness of using the power of government to get involved and throw its weight around. Or more normally the un-rightness of it. The arguements weren't/aren't following a debate about what the government might do to help skilled jobs remain in the U.S. but whether the government should do anything. Tonight, it's a thought which suggests that maybe the government ought to do something about people hawking snake oil, and another that proposes it to be a worse offense against the public to have the gov' step in. Next time it might well be an issue about finding some way to sue your HMO when (not if) it denies treatment just to meet arbitrary financial goals. Not much luck on that one in the current pro-business, anti-regulation climate. Or maybe somebody found 'too much' money in the pension fund and redirected it to some new scam that leaves you nearly pensionless. And on and on and on. Who you gonna call when the fatcats have got your money and don't do what they said they would? Where might the public turn for justice and protection on any account at all?
This isn't an altogether useless debate. Granted, this type of discussion always gets folks hot-n-bothered, as there are seemingly a million instances in which the regulations got it wrong. Still, I tend to think that smart, finely-crafted government intervention helps in a whole range of affairs. And in some situations it is absolutely neccessary. (We desperately need the Bush administration to step in and split stock evaluating firms apart from stock underwriting firms. The very health of the stock market depends on having stock raters independent from persuasion.) Some programs fail, others make things worse, but trusting in the efficacy of 'no-regulation' is a giant leap over some edge I'm not prepared to make. The history of the world simply doesn't indicate that we'll all be better off by letting anybody do anything they want. Does it? What's wrong with having the voice of the people stand against some things? By the way, aren't the conservatives all for just that whenever one of their favorite issues is in play? Right now the Attorney General is pulling out every legal manuever in the books to stall the state of Oregon from enacting its twice-passed public referendum allowing assisted suicide. The federal regional appellate court has reprimanded Ashcroft for plainly using cheap tricks in this, but he says he has to do it by conscience. I mean, what gives? Where's the dividing line between conscience for him and conscience for the rest of us? If yanking these scummy ads looks good to my sensibilities then how might one argue that it's 'wrong' to try? With respect, I say. Using the power of government to curtail some act has a long history in this country and I say we'd be much worse off without this redress.
These low-brow commercials suckering people into ingesting God-knows-what kind of bathtub-and-radiator concoctions for a better erection, keeping a full head of hair, and losing weight while we sleep are all lies. C'mon, it's all BS, and that's important. We all knew there would be a slew of herbal cocktails being offered for this crap as soon as Viagra hit the market. And fat burners while you sleep? Please! What about a sense of decorum on the radio station? We should all be bathed in these ads 24/7/365 just to protect the 'right' to make an easy buck off desperately fat women and guys who've lost their stiffy? I don't know about that. And what's in this stuff anyway?
So why do anything about it? Well, why not? Isn't that the real issue? Why does a bunch of crooks, who predictably say they believe in their own nonsense, have a reasonable expectation of using the publicly-owned broadcast spectrum to draw people into using this stuff? Has anyone checked on the medical effects of using these drugs? Doubtful, and it doesn't seem likely that they are all harmless. That's one of the reasons the FDA insists that companies selling medications do some d*mn labwork. To avoid making people sicker instead of better. Or maybe sick when they were well to begin with. They really should have to prove it before they can sell it. Third world countries don't protect their citizens from this crap. Can't we do better than Bangladesh?
I say haul the commercials down. The odds are that they are bunk, and this being so the sellers of such crap are the ones who should have to 'do something' in order to ping their wares off the public's ears. I know this is going to sting, but to insist that the public is actually better off being pelted by these lies rather than pro-actively kept from them isn't a position that takes as its first priority the safety of the public. My suspicion is that an abhorence of government action is part of a satisfying ideological stance which says the government screws up everything it touches and that if people want to happily eat poison then let 'em. So what if others make a pile of cash selling the poison, and drag us all a little deeper into the gutter. Who is anyone to say no? Hmmmmm.....I'm not so sure this is an altogether defensible position, is it? Really, taken as a whole, what might be the reasoning which says that these fake medications should better be left on the market?
There is a strong undercurrent of thought these days which hates government, plainly and completely. We'll all be a lot worse off in the end if this way of operating runs a full course. Remember, back in '95 or so Gingrich and Co. actually tried to do away with the FDA. What?! Do you want to have some pharmaceutical giant with ten million dollars to spend on an advertising campaign snooker you into eating something that will destroy your spleen? Oh, later on they say that only .72% of respondents had that problem. Well, bad luck I guess to those 7200 people if a million used it.... We simply have to have the assistance of a functioning beauracracy, working under reasonable legislation, to haul us up out the mud. Maybe that sucks, but that's the way it is. I have yet to hear of a country which has no rules that is anything other than a hellhole. Of course, it's all in the specifics. Too much regulation is almost as bad. But bottom-line, we just can't give ourselves over to falling for the false promise of no-regulation. And don't think the no-reg crowd will restrain themselves too often when they want to put an end to something they don't like themselves.
In all fairness, some kind of respectful nod needs to be given the smart folks who feel that we do, in fact, live in a country over-wrought with regulation. Surely this is partly true. Some big gov' programs have hurt, such as welfare. Others are a wash but still cost a lot of money, moving neither forward nor back. Some seem to hamper innovation and trade for little good reason, as we all know the business-haters have had their hand in the cookie jar too. I acknowledge all this, and am all out for indentifying the lemons. But this particular topic isn't about wasting taxpayer money so much as restricting private parties from engaging in commerce. I think it's this interference in making money any ol' way that is the actual offending part. There is some sense of ultimate freedom wrapped up in this, and also the aggravation of being expected to explain yourself. Hey, it offends me too to think of OSHA shutting me down for some obscure rule, but there are worse things in life than personal aggravation, you know?
Whether or not the peddlers of these useless and quite possibly harmful 'remedies' should be allowed to sell them is a matter ripe for public discussion. I say that unless they can prove the stuff they are encouraging people to eat can be shown to be both useful and safe they ought to be forced out of business. And the sooner the better, for us all. And if that puts an end to some bottom feeding commercials, well... too bad. They can all get real jobs and do some work that has value. Amassing a mountain of money by playing on the fears of people in a bad way is no good in my book. I mean, how many old ladies' social security checks does it take to buy a TV preacher a private jet? Anyone here got Flawwell's phone number? I'm a little tired of the time-honored Southern tradition of hoo-dooing poor people myself. And I don't feel too bad about trying to stop it either.
I started by saying I'd be respectful to other people this time 'round. I hope I'm doing that, while at the same time lobbying for access to ending some things by law. To my eye, that's the thread here. To counter the current wave of thinking which tells us we can abandon regulation altogether, even though no one has said such a thing. But can anyone here say exactly why the peddlers of these potions should have unfettered access to the public? Just this one example will shed a lot of light on regulation, all the way from Enron to Worldcom to Adelphia and back again. Tell me all those fifty-somethings who have lost their retirements don't want to find someone to do something for them now. And maybe even to prevent such brazen stock manipulations in the future. Well, how? I wonder how many of 'em voted for Bush....
Trust and progress come in funny places. I fully understand the impulse to say, "To hell with government." Just show me something that works better and I'm in.
Making lots of friends again,
J. Elliott