To get into the flow of this story, take a look at John's comment to my last post. It's right below this one. This is great and speaks to the value of blogging. My take is different from John's even though we seem to share the same philosophical bent on what’s wrong with things: we’ve swayed in this Country too far away from caring about our people and too far toward making profits regardless of the hurt it might cause to others. It’s a pendulum thing.
I’d love to hear from others who may have read the Article or who just have an opinion. Maybe it’s my free market leanings of the past fifty years, but I just disagree that stifling risk taking and innovation is ever good. But I do agree that rampant, uncontrolled and total freedom in the market place generates ever more selfish, “the greatest profit at any cost,” cultures, and I think we’ve all seen the hurt caused under that view. In other words, I don’t think "survival of the fittest at any cost" has current value in civilized cultures.
So, it’s a matter of balance, as the Article points out. Where do we each come down in the discussion about balance?
I’m not sure how many people may have pointed to this problem before, but I am sure I’ve never before heard it put quite this profoundly: innovation and entrepreneurship absolutely needs cohesion for its survival; cohesion absolutely needs innovation and entrepreneurship for its very survival; yet each is bent on the destruction of the other.
As I read Manzi’s article, I thought he was pretty clear in his ideas regarding solutions. Others didn’t. Again, that sort of disagreement is probably what makes our Country great even though people on both sides believe strongly that we’re near the edge of Armageddon.
Steve,
ReplyDeleteI think the distinction should be regulation with purpose and regulation for the sake of regulation. For example, I recently had to form a corporation in another state. I was dismayed to find that this state makes it exceedingly difficult to form a corporation compared with the process in Colorado. I'm not talking about a difference in cost or any regulation that could be related to protecting the public. Rather, it was just a matter of requiring either snail mail that takes weeks or in-person processing that requires a travel of several hundred miles to the only office in the state where you can submit your registration documents. That's regulation without a purpose, or if there is a purpose it is solely to benefit the regulators.
As a contrast, I have become concerned since Colorado eliminated the requirement that corporations or LLCs formed in the state cannot have a name that is confusingly similar to another entity already existing in the state. So now I could form a company called Xcel Energies and cause confusion with the existing Xcel Energy. In the past, my attempts to piggyback on the existing company's name would have been disallowed by the Colorado Secretary of State. That's a regulation I thought was generally reasonable and designed to protect both the public and existing Colorado businesses.
I think regulation does stifle innovation, but the right kind of regulation stifles the wrong kind of innovation.
Karen, that's a wonderful observation. Of course, it's right on. I am always hopeful. Maybe this latest round of our Government's politics will result in a wakeup call, at least for a short while. The healthcare dust-up will certainly require more than just politicians sticking their tongues out at one another to resolve.
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