The thing that discourages me about financial regulation is that it's going to be a huge, unreadable bill, written mostly by lobbyists, which disproportionately burdens small businesses and outlaws anything innovative, thereby eliminating competition and reinforcing the corporate oligarchy that exists.

So is deregulation the answer?

Well, no. When deregulation gets done, the bills are written mostly by lobbyists. The big corporations identify a few of their pain points and we happily eliminate those regulations, but we never worry about the things that are most burdensome to small businesses or the regulations that prohibit new companies from starting up at all. So deregulation tends to strengthen existing companies and reinforce the corporate oligarchy that already exists.

Basically, for the market to work better we need to increase competition, but Congress will never have any incentive to encourage increased competition. That proposition would pit the lobbying dollars of every existing company in an industry against the interests of companies that haven't been formed yet.

Totally right - the other astonishing thing is just how cheaply regulators and congress can be bought. A congressional race costs between 1-5 million for all but the most expensive media markets. That's all they need to raise, total. If you're a multi-billion industry player, what's a few million to set up a PAC? It's nothing, compared to the return you get. Run a few ads claiming that the non-bought person in the race is going to restrict your freedom or let terrorists into the country or some bombastic nonsense. Huge ROI.

I don't think that's true at all. Not knowing much about economics does not cause people to have less strongly held opinions on it, it often causes them to have more. There are millions of people who don't even understand basic economic concepts who are vehemently opposed or in favor of government bailouts.

I think mostly its because of ideological difference (small government, national debt, non-republican government) over actual rational opinion on economics (This is not to say I support or disapprove of the bailout).

If this was a non-ideological/political position we would be having a civil war over bushes spending during his term.

In an effort to defuse any potential flames that may arise from a hot-button issue like gay marriage let me replace your example with "social issues".

You argue that financial regulation is important (and it is) but the problem with your statement is that the economy is all-important. I'm not going to argue that it isn't, rather I am merely goung to point out that people have very different ideas about what government is for.

For some there are many social issues that Are important to society as a whole. One could argue that freedom of religion is an unproductive distraction.

One can argue that we shouldn't legislate morality, which many clearly try to do, but we do that in many ways. Theft, murder, etc are all morality when it comes down to it.

If you approach democracy by saying "these people are irrational because issue X doesn't matter to the economy" you're not making any useful observation. In fact, it's a bit like arguing that the problem with democracy is that you don't get the outcome you want.