I don't think this is a reasonable position at all, especially in my own industry, chemical engineering. The externalities that some businesses can impose on the public are so large that the public MUST have regulatory powers. If that encourages corruption we have to prosecute the corrupt, not weaken the oversight.
Re:The next SOPA
by InclinedPlane on Friday January 20, 2012 @05:15PM
(#3491466)
I do not mean an absence of regulation, I mean limits on regulation, regulation as nothing more than the rule of law, and far less excessive government spending and "earmarks". A company should properly be concerned with whether or not it is complying with the law, and that should be an existential concern especially when it comes to significant externalities.
A company should not be concerned with whether or not it has enough influence in Washington relative to its competitors.
I'd speculate that for most industries the latter tends to be a higher level of concern than the former, and that is not in any way ok.
> The externalities that some businesses can impose on the public are so large that the public MUST have regulatory powers. If that encourages corruption we have to prosecute the corrupt, not weaken the oversight.
You're confusing "MUST" (actually SHOULD) with "CAN".
Look into regulatory capture. You can't ignore it or legislate it away any more than you can ignore or legislate away gravity.
This is somewhat circular. The government's influence over all these industries is partially a product of the fact that these industries finance the campaigns of the representatives.
Representatives without sufficient capital to finance their own campaigns rely on being in their financiers' (corporations) good graces. That means strategically putting their fingers in every industry.
There's no solution to the government industrial complex without campaign finance reform.
In short corruption is a symptom, trying to stop the least objectionable types of it will merely drive it underground and more direct. The problem we need to solve is the ability of corruption to be successful.