From: koumis@husc4.harvard.edu (Anthony Koumis)
Newsgroups: alt.politics.elections
Subject: Re: Regulations
Date: 12 Apr 92 15:09:26 GMT
Distribution: usa
Organization: Harvard University Science Center

I am completely at a loss to understand Jason W. SOlinsky.  FIrst he
says that he wants  less gov't regulations b/c that by definitions
equals more freedom.  

When I point out that we have other threats of our freedom from
companies he seems to accept anything they do as o.k. b/c itis 
the name of competition and free market.

Then he says if it is good business for credit bureaus to find out
private, often rumours about you that are irrelevant about your
creditworthiness than that if fine.

You cant have it both ways.  Interference into private lives, by
gov't or business is interference.  REporting lies about your life
that are irrelevant is an invasion of privacy, an invasion that I
should be free of.  I should apply for credit without knowing that
behind closed doors lies are free to be manufactured about me.

That brings us to negative quota requirements by credit bureau investigators.
THis is not an incentive like  suppose a commission based slaesperson to 
make more money.  It is an incentive to report untrue things about the
people you are investigating.  Suppose the investigator is told bring in 10%
negative information & he only finds 8% while he is below quota so
there is the incentive to bring in false negative information.

The point, that I said about unsafe cars is this. In a totally unregulated
car market car manufacturers would not have that much incentive to
make safer cars.  They could get together and decide not to offer certain
safety features b/c it was cheaper not to.  This would mean no one could
choose a safer car if it was not offered.

Also, if there are no safety regulations in place then no one will know
what cars are safe or not.  I know that earlier JSW suggested private
little companies to run around testing cars.  INefficient econmics.
And there is the fear of car companies setting up such "independent"
companies to certify a car as safe.

JSW also says that I have missed the point about Pinto. He says that
there are alot of incentives to make safe cars.  If so why did 
Pinto fight for years to stop gov't regulation of increasing the rear
end bumper safety standards?  B/c it would have meant they would
have had to spend a little money on changing the pinto which they
didint want to do.  

No one buying the pinto was told this car is unsafe at this type of
rear end collission b/c we decided it was better economics.

In the proceeding against FOrd about the Pinto, a Ford memo was found
that showed that at their calculus it was cheaper to make a car
that would kill 180 people a year than spend $11 fixing each car to
prevent their deaths. THe memo says that 180 deaths at $200,000, 180
serious burn injuries at $67,000 and 2,100 burned vehicles at
$700 equals $49.5 million.  THis was less they figured than the $11
per 1.5 mil truck and $11 per 11 mill car which came out to $137 mil.
Therefore, it was cheaper to make unsafe cars, fight gov't regulations
that would make them safer, and sell to UNKNOWING consumers an 
unsafe products.

THere is no such thing as perfect information in a perfect market.

Consumers would not necessarily know what they are being sold.

And, allowing companies to sell anything wiht no safery regulations makes
the poor sectors of society locked into buying bad, unsafe products.

JSW feels that the govt keeps people in Harlem by feeding them (then
making the abnoxious assumption that eeveryone in Harlem is on
wlefare and perhaps if they had a job they could all afford to move
despite the fact that mininum wage jobs you mprobably cant
support one person on)

SO in his vision of the world, I htink that companies to a larger extent
than they do now can keep everyone down.

Let me calrify my point,  I think it is simplistic to think that
the abolition of gov't regulations will make this a better country with
so-called more freedom.

I do not endorse all regulations as I stated in my postings.  One
ahs to look carefully at what is being regulated and the purposes.
It is true that many industries like regulation (the regulated doing
the regulating) b/c then they can control prices etc. and make sure
no one can undersell them.

But that is a case of industry influence in administrative agencies and
should be addressed on that level, not the simple but irresponsible
level of abolishing them all.