AGAINST REGULATION

The principle of the free society is firmly against the regulation of the economy. Instead it works by liability laws. By that we mean that we should be against setting up a bureacratic agency to provide detailed regulation of every aspect of a particular industry thus putting costs on all businesses. Rather we provide a court system whereby cheaply and effectively any bad practicioners can be dealt with. Eg. there is no Health and Safety Executive but there is a law that makes a man responsible is someone falls on his property because he has not made it safe. Notice there is no team of inspectors charging people to go round to inspect their roofs property and fits with a certain standard. Nevertheless people are aware of the legal danger in not providing. The difference between the two systems is huge

Advantages of our System

  1. Every business is burdened with a high cost in time and money of complying with many regulations. These extra costs are either passed on in higher prices of goods or lower wages to employees. If these regulations are abolished then prices will go down and wages up, benefiting everyone. This is particularly true of the lack of opportunity for both young people in their twenties and at the other end of experience people in their 50s. The reason that the right jobs aren't there is a result of the regualated society. The more we regulate, the less activity takes place. The companies that would have otherwise have sprung up or expanded cannot do so because of the web of regulations that they face.
  2. Those who enforce the regulations are a drain on economic growth. If the regulations were abolished then they would be able to devote their energies to ordinary productive jobs thus more people would be contributing rather than draining economic growth. ( Economic growth is essentially driven by the process of finding new and better ways to provide goods and services, so bureaucratic jobs do not contribute to it like private sector jobs do. More jobs are only a good thing if its more private sector jobs) The truly bad are more effectively punished in the legal courts of a Biblical system where penalties are quite high.

Further proof that this was the Biblical system

  1. Only around 600 laws in the bible mostly "thou shalt nots" which is an indicator of a liablity law system. There are boundaries and outside these boundaries you have freedom to do as you please. Contrast the regulation system where millions of minor regulations exist prescribing our every action.
  2. In biblical law there are no prices or wage values set in contrast to the Hamurabi code of Babylon and others which set the "fair" price of corn , grain,etc
  3. The regulation system is indicative of the modern "state worship" where the state wants the power to control everything purely out of desire for power. Where God is worshipped as the sovreign of a political system the all pervasive state is not needed or desired.

Scope Christians should work for the repeal of many regulative acts and institutions including:

  1. Health and Safety Acts: these should be replaced simply by the clear and predictable enforcement of ______ which means only those who do not impose safety standards are penalised rather than everyone. The removal of the regulations will enable the businesses involved to save their compliance costs and thus provide their goods and services cheaper and better.
  2. Financial Services Acts: these should be replaced by the Biblical penalty for theft ( 2,4 or 5 times repaid of what was stolen) by any adviser than wilfully gives bad advice. The removal of the regulations will enable the good advisers to provide their service cheaper and more effectively.
  3. All food acts: Most of the time normal free market competition makes shops and restaurants keen to be hygenic to keep their customers. If someone did get poisoned then the restaurant manager could be sued if he was negligent. Laws on the meat content of sausages etc are simply ridiculous- such things should be left to consumer tastes. Butchery acts come under this ( whole factories and farms being shut down when they'd never had a single complaint from customers, everything having to be replaced by stainless steel needlessly at huge cost)
  4. Any fixing of prices and wages. Minimum wages create unemployment by making those who are just starting new jobs and have little skills unemployable ( as the minimum wage is higher than what they are worth at that time). Jesus says specifically in the Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard " do I not have the right to pay each man what I have agreed with him". Employers and employees are thus free to set a rate of pay agreeable to both and the government is forbidden from involvement. Maximum wages (yep , in the 16th century there were maximum wages to "protect" employers from having to increase wages to attract workers back to agriculture). These are equally illegal Biblically, if employers need to increase wages to attract enough workers to work in a particular area of economic life then they need to be allowed to do so and don't need the protection of government. Price controls on rents in New York have led merely to abandoned buildings and no new houses being built ( no incentives for private sector to build) Econ May 17th 97 Indonesia: Minimum wage has tripled in last 3 years causing loss of 2-3% total employment Ec July 26th 1997 (World Bank calculations)
  5. M.O.T. regulations: Apart from the fact that repeated studies show that these have no appreciable effect on road safety and cost everyone a lot, making people for liable for any damages done to anyone else as a result of negligence in the upkeep of your car would be a far cheaper and more effective deterant.
  6. Licensing of taxis: licensing of taxis merely restricts the numbers able to practise and so keeps prices higher than they would otherwise be to everyone's detriment.
  7. Zoning/ Planning Permission laws: if these laws stop a piece of land being built on which is the best site and a business has to use another site then the buildings built will be more expensive or less good quality or perhaps they won't be built at all. All these things lead to a loss to society. The same goes for improvements. If there building planned is a total eyesore to the extent that property values decrease then its possible that the developer could be sued for damages. Taiwan was critised for its lack of land use planning( Systems of Survival , Jacobs p 175). Could be part of its success. Portland,Oregan with its once admired very tight planning laws has the second most expensive houses in America (after San Francisco). Ec Aug 9th97 p40

    It is recognised that regulations in Japan make housing very expensive - namely shade laws, earthquake laws, rice land laws, inheritance tax laws). This is a major problem now in Japan. As a result of planning regulations buildings are not located where it is most economically benficial for them to be. This results in higher prices of goods , less employment and lower wages and lower levels of profit and investment.

  8. Licensing of schools : possibly worst of all. Means that new schools have difficulty breaking in to the marketplace and competing. Fortunately this type of legislation seems to be on the way out.
  9. Affirmative action: to try and get various minorities (Blacks in US, Malays in Brunei, etc) into jobs or college a quota system in used. Like all the other types of regulations this backfired in that the genuine achievers were thought to be only in their positions to fill a quota.
  10. Any other form of licensing ( which mainly act to restrain trade and prevent falls in prices and wages that are the basis of progress)
  11. Restrictions on imports of any kind: raises prices for everyone in the country ( various ways : quotas, tariffs, tax audits on anyone buying a foreign car ( South Korea). <