[T]he hands-off brand of capitalism in the United States is now being blamed for the easy credit that sickened the housing market and allowed a freewheeling Wall Street to create a pool of toxic investments that has infected the global financial system. Heavy intervention by the government, critics say, is further robbing Washington of the moral authority to spread the gospel of laissez-faire capitalism.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27112481/

Steve Susman, the Houston lawyer who donated his time to the cause, also alluded at the screening to deregulation’s shortcomings.

“The free market system simply does not work in this area,” he said.

Of course, we don’t really know. Deregulation hasn’t given us a free market, it’s given us a market mash-up that’s both free and fixed.

Our legislators were quick to buy Ken Lay’s deregulation sales pitch, but promises that it would lower our electric bills proved as accurate as an Enron balance sheet.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/business/steffy/5676803.html

[T]he second 9/11 — the slow-motion collapse of the American, and maybe the global, economy — has been caused by a catastrophic failure of intelligence about Wall Street rapacity. If the now five-year-old Iraq war was the inevitable, tragic consequence of the neoconservatives’ Project for the New American Century, then the subprime mortgage quagmire, the Bear Stearns bailout, and the foreclosure fiasco are the foreordained outcome of the Republican ideology which holds that regulation of corporate financial behavior is the domestic equivalent of Islamofascism.

The economic meltdown is the new 9/11, and it’s George W. Bush’s fault — his, and the fundamentalist free-marketeers who have been living high on the hog, feeding at the public trough, intimidating Democrats, and getting away with capitalist murder ever since Ronald Reagan made “government” a dirty word.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marty-kaplan/my-goat-ate-the-economy_b_91759.html

—True, many products don’t make it to market for safety reasons, but this is true for all competitors. Seen from the vantage point of the consumer, forcing ‘bad’ products off the market creates opportunities for innovators who can build a ‘good’ product to satisfy the need, thereby benefitting the consumer in the long run.—

Oh, I agree entirely. But as far as the producers are concerned, they are already in competition with each other, and the additional “burden” of meeting government regulation is viewed as an unwelcome impediment in that competition.

Another way to look at it, from the commercial viewpoint, consumers exist solely to benefit the producer. From the consumer viewpoint, producers exist only to benefit the consumer. The reality is that neither group could function without the other and both are producers AND consumers. But the ideological distinction (aritificial to be sure) is akin to the rejection by certain people that each individual has both a masculine and a feminine aspect. It only makes sense, but we’ve all talked to people, I’m sure, who simply won’t accept that. (Okay, so it’s a stretch, but it’s the only simile I could think of this early )

Here’s a Wikipedia excerpt on Libertarianism:

Many libertarians view life, liberty, and property as the ultimate rights possessed by individuals, and that compromising one necessarily endangers the rest. In democracies, they consider compromise of these individual rights by political action to be tyranny of the majority, a term first coined by Alexis de Tocqueville, and made famous by John Stuart Mill, which emphasizes the threat of the majority to impose majority norms on minorities, and violating their rights in the process. “…There needs protection also against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling, against the tendency of society to impose, by other means than civil penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them…”[14]

Having weak state executive control means libertarian societies are more dependent on the courts for conflict resolution. An impartial judiciary can thus be of paramount importance, for without it wealthy and collective interests might run roughshod over the private citizen.

An example often cited by Republican Texas congressman Ron Paul[citation needed] is the disrespect for property rights during and soon after the industrial revolution. Many factories were allowed to pollute their neighbors’ property with impunity as the courts cast a deaf ear to the cries of individual property owners.[citation needed]

Some libertarians favor Common Law, which they see as less arbitrary and more adaptable than statutory law. The relative benefits of common law evolving toward ever-finer definitions of property rights were articulated by thinkers such as Friedrich Hayek, Richard Epstein, Robert Nozick, and Randy Barnett. Some libertarian thinkers believe that this evolution can define away various “commons” such as pollution or other interactions viewed by some as externalities. “A libertarian society would not allow anyone to injure others by pollution because it insists on individual responsibility.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarianism

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I do want to make sure that I’m not missing something big here. Therefore, I’ve subscribed to receive one year of a magazine: Reason: Free Minds and Free Markets. I received my first issue today. Here’s the focus of Reason (from the Reason website):

Founded in 1968, Reason advances a free society by developing, applying, and promoting libertarian principles, including individual liberty, free markets, and the rule of law.

Reason produces respected public policy research on a variety of issues and publishes the critically acclaimed monthly magazine, Reason. Together, our top-tier think tank and political and cultural magazine reach a diverse, influential audience, advancing the values of individual freedom and choice, limited government, and market-friendly policies.

Reason Foundation’s nonpartisan public policy research promotes choice, competition, and a dynamic market economy as the foundation for human dignity and progress. Reason produces rigorous, peer reviewed research and directly engages the policy process, seeking strategies that emphasize cooperation, flexibility, local knowledge, and results. Through practical and innovative approaches to complex problems, Reason seeks to change the way people think about issues, and promote policies that allow and encourage individuals and voluntary institutions to flourish.

Reason is the monthly print magazine of “free minds and free markets.”

I’ll report on the progress of my Libertarian education periodically.

As regards safety, the PTO is not staffed with experts on that subject; thus, is unequipped to address it. Likewise for other agencies not tasked with addressing it. Likewise, assigning multiple agencies to address the same issue unnecessarily multiplies the cost of compliance, making U.S. companies at a disadvantage relative to non-U.S. competitors.

True, many products don’t make it to market for safety reasons, but this is true for all competitors. Seen from the vantage point of the consumer, forcing ‘bad’ products off the market creates opportunities for innovators who can build a ‘good’ product to satisfy the need, thereby benefitting the consumer in the long run.

My comment on patent application had nothing to do with the patent office process—but if regulation meant a delay in the development of a new product by one factor which allowed a competitor to get there first, then regulation would be seen as Bad. I was talking about a situation in which the patent office would not even see the product due to other regulatory requirements.

The question Erich posed was why regulation is opposed. My response has to do with perception, not reality. Regulation that might actually work to keep bad products off the market are presented by corporations as wrenches in the gears. The reality, as you point out, rarely jibes with the perception, but there you have it. They are working against the possibility of regulation that would somehow prevent profit making. It is the mindset of those who feel that any hoop put in their path to jump through is a life or death threat to the “natural” processes of the market.

I did not mean to suggest that it has ever been the patent office’s job to determine safety. But what if it was? We have agencies to determine the suitability of food, of television and radio content, and after-the-fact agencies that trigger Recalls. Not much of a step from that to before-the-fact regulation.

It’s a species of paranoia.