[PEN-L:33517] RE: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Right wing sees the light! (almost)

["Devine, James" <jdevine@xxxxxxx>]

Title: RE: [PEN-L:33516] Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Right wing sees the light! (almost)

Michael Perelman wrote:
>Which industries are you thinking about and which regulations?  Some
>regulation limits competition and some put limits on corporations.  So
>deregulation is a fuzzy term.

Doug wrote:>Airlines and trucking, to start with.

there are at least three kinds of "deregulation," all united by a greater emphasis on the use of "market forces":

1) the abolition of government-sponsored cartels, such as the Civil Aeronautics Board and the Interstate Commerce Commission, causing the kind of dereg that Doug refers to (in the US).

2) social/environmental/etc. dereg, i.e., the weakening of various gov't efforts to deal with "market failure."

3) bizarre dereg aimed at replacing the regulation of natural monopolies (such as electrical power generation and distribution) with a split market. In California, generation was presumed to be competitive (and less regulated) and distribution was presumed to be a natural monopoly (and regulated).

it should be obvious that not only dereg but the original government regulations could be bad for consumers and/or workers. The ICC wasn't particularly good for consumers, while the old system of power regulation in California encouraged the building of nukes.

The quality of both regulation and dereg depends, in my mind, on the degree of activism of the people. If people are actively fighting to ensure that the government programs are better for them, it's more likely that they will.

Jim