On the Soapbox

This article in the Washington Post makes me very angry. Especially the last line:

"I still think this is a great country," Hettinga said. "In Mexico, they would have just shot me."

Gee. What consolation that is. But why couldn't this country be even better?

This sort of thing is the main reason why I hate Democrats (and this new breed of equally corrupt big-government Republicans). I am certainly not opposed to government playing a role to correct natural market failures, but why do people always insist that government play a regulatory, rule-making role? If there is a market failure that needs to be fixed (externalities or insufficiently informed consumers), then fix the market failure. Why is there always this itch to go one step further and to start making rules to regulate and control? Want something to happen? Fine, go and incentivize it, don't force it. Even if people don't accept the moral argument against governments forcing behavior, why not the practical argument that regulatory policies--no matter how good-intentioned they may be at the outset--represent "security holes" (to use a software engineering analogy) that almost invariably invite "exploits"--corruption and abuse at some point in time; to those who say that libertarian policy is built upon idealistic wishing, I say that expecting government to always do good is even more unrealistically idealistic.

While I'm on the topic, the recent ban on trans fats in New York City is an excellent example of a gross regulatory overstep. Why is the city imposing a blanket ban on this stuff? Yes, most restaurants can do without it for most foods, but there may be some dishes that require odd ingredients that may contain some amounts of this stuff. Even if that were not the case, why go as far as ban it? Why not just inform the customers by requiring that restaurants post information about the trans fats in their foods, and let the consumers decide if they want to patronize someone using harmful ingredients (given the amount of money that is made hawking heart health products in this country, I think consumers do care very much about their mortality). Or if the city is concerned about the rising health care costs that result from these fats (since health care is taxpayer-subsidized), they could even tax trans fats to offset the costs to the taxpayers and also to give businesses a cost incentive to switch away from them. Any of those methods would've been just as effective and much less blunt (and immoral!) than just tossing in an outright ban.