Hundreds of millions of tons of coal were wasted by poor mining methods, hundreds of millions of barrels of oil wasted by criminally reckless drilling. Billions of cubic feet of natural gas were allowed to escape and fifty percent of the annual timber cut was lost through inefficiency. The regulatory role for the government was not the creation of power hungry federal bureaucrats, but undertaken in response to overwhelming popular demand. It saved American capitalism from itself. The government's regulatory role in a modernized economy is essential.
Private enterprise is innovative, efficient, and cost effective, but the market is ethically blind.
Only the government, responsible to the people, can strike a balance between social needs and private gain. The individual is helpless in the face of the concentrations of corporate power. We need government to insure that airplanes and cars are safe, that our bank deposits are secure, that our drugs are effective, that the air we breath and the water we drink won't poison us. Bill Clinton proclaimed over a year ago that the era of big government was over. But it clearly isn't over.