| Sure, but you can come up with real analogies that cut the other way. And you don't even have to go to hypotheticals. Take food. The US has reasonably strong food laws. Nobody in their right mind would suggest that we go for China-style food safety laws (mmm, melamine infant formula and "meat" made from whatever fits in the grinder) and then hope that suits from individual sick people fixes it. Also, you're ignoring half the costs. I have confidence that I can buy pretty much any food in any store or restaurant in my city with very low odds of getting sick and zero odds of getting poisoned. Complying with food safety regulations may be expensive for the producer, but removes very expensive burdens from consumers. Moreover, a well-regulated market is more friendly to consumers via increased competition. If our food safety laws were poor, then I'd only buy from producers who had very strong reputations. The risk of trying a new product or a cheaper competitor would be much higher, so innovation would be lower and overall prices would be higher. I think investment in the US is closely analogous. Well-regulated markets can help all participants, buyers and sellers alike. Also, Taibbi's skepticism of Wall Street is well earned. The recession we are still working out of was mainly caused by financial shenanigans, but nobody is in jail and regulatory fixes have been minimal. Anthony Mozillo, for example, made north of $600m; his eventual punishment was to have to give back 10% of that. Lesson learned, I'm sure! The JOBS Act could be entirely innocuous, but "once bitten, twice shy" seems reasonable to me. |