can some explain why more gov't regulation is bad?

regarding the free market but being a Financial Historian and Austrian Economist I can tell you what I believe.
Government regulation to the benefit of one market participant over another has no place in a free market, those asking or allowing are Crony Capitalist.
Corruption is the intrusion into the free market system in the form of government regulation”. Milton Friedman.
And the cornerstone of the free market is ‘Sound Money”, which can only happen in a free market. If you wanted to create that system today you would have to end the banking cartel, close the Fed, allows bank to print currency backed by gold and redeemable on demand.
I believe we should nullify the Constitution and return to a truer Republic under the Articles of Confederation. (I don’t think RP believes in this, but it’s the only legal and non combative way to get back the control of this country, close the US government)

Wait, so he thinks the government should bail out financial companies with taxpayer dollars when they pursue bad and corrupt policies, and he thinks Ron Paul is the corporatist tool?

Corruption is the intrusion into the free market system in the form of government regulation”.

Government regulation to the benefit of one markert participant over another has no place in a free market, those asking or allowing are Croni Capitalist.

The original definition of "regulate" is "to make regular" or to remove hindrance or restrictions. So the original intent of the commerce clause allows the government to remove barriers of trade. In the US we like turning definitions on their heads and have them mean the exact opposite, now regulation is synonymous with restriction. This definition flipping has persisted since Hamilton created the federalist party (who opposed federalism and instead promoted nationalism) and labelled those who supported federalism "anti-federalists". While federalism was widely popular amongst the public, many were simply fooled by the name (think "Patriot Act" or "No Child Left Behind", which mislead the people today) This phenomenon persists even today as the classical definition of "liberal" is much more closely related to the beliefs that Ron Paul tirelessly espouses every waking moment of his life, liberty (or libertarianism).
Now I will get to the real History...
The industrial revolution was a time of corruption, indeed, and the government did get involved and began regulating the corruption... but they regulated not by the definition that we know today, but the classical definition. The government, at the pleading of the industry giants (robber barons) came in and made corruption much more regular.
The (admittedly) socialist Historian Gabriel Kolko wrote two books which pertain to this subject. The first was 'The Triumph of Conservatism' ('63) and the second being 'Railroads and Regulations' ('65). Both of these works highlights how the monsters of industry were not opposed to government intervention in their industry, but instead overwhelmingly supported the measures.
Here is my explanation of the market during this time... when someone gains control as an industry leader and they are the big dog in the market, their number one goal is to stay on top and keep competitors from threatening their control/ share of the market. Often they achieved this dominance from innovation and cutting costs, providing the consumers with new and useful products at a much cheaper rate than before... this is a good thing and highlights the effectiveness of the free market, the consumer has the power and control and they are the ones who benefit from competition.
However, once the giants mount the perch of their industry, they tend to, instead of continuing the innovation, just look for a way to keep the upstarts down and solidify the current profit margin. During the late 1800s we saw many different attempts by industry's status quo to intervene and prevent competition (through things such as pools, backroom deals of setting prices between competitors to solidify both companies, ie promising not to undercut one another and share market control). but as soon as they fix their artificially high prices, here comes some upstart who offers the true low market price and BAM their pool has been busted and now they are under threat of going under to the new competitor acting under market conditions and fulfilling consumer demand much more effectively... The market eventually breaks these kinds of deviations away from the natural order. the only drawback i can see is that it takes time. It takes time for an upstart to become efficient... it takes time for a boycott to make an impact.
So what does Kolko say? he says that once the robber barons realized that their is no way to solidify their stranglehold of an economy without continually competing and innovating and keeping consumers/ customers happy... they go crying to Washington and beg congress and the president to protect them with their swords and purses because they are so vital to the economy as a whole. This is a total fallacy because they are only looking for a way to relax and be lazy and continue to indefinitely collect profits, meanwhile the consumers are paying much higher non-market prices.
Kolko says that this is the case; government regulation of industry is only a disguise for barriers to market entry... by creating all these rules that new railroads (for instance) have to abide by, it acts as a protection for the major RRs who can handle such regulation, but the little guy trying to deliver a better product can't get his business off its feet.
In short, Regulations only support Corporatism (the close relationship between big business and big government).
Ron Paul is the most outspoken opponent to corporatism, unfortunately those who are receptive to his message misunderstand History as well as economics, and write him off as one of the very people he is trying to stop.
Ron Paul is the true progressive. End the war on drugs and the medical industrial complex's assault on our health. End the wars of terror and the military industrial complex's bloodthirsty appetite for slaughter and the money it reaps. End the Federal Reserve's destruction of our economy and the era of Corporatism once and for all! Ron Paul 2012... possibly our only chance to vote for a meaningful candidate.
(just posted that on thedailyshow.com's interview with Ron Paul. http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/mon-september-26-2011/excl... have fun)

The alternative is this: honest money and that means money that is fully backed and convertible to something of intrinsic value, and that means gold and silver. Interest rates are set by the Market, not government. Fractional Reserve Banking is FRAUD and prosecuted. Government's job is to prevent fraud and monopoly. Monopoly is defined as a system where one entity enjoys freedom from competition either by collusion with suppliers, intimidation, or the use of government to stifle competition.

Next question!

Government Doesn't Work

Reason Magazine, March 1998

Letter to the editor

In "The Croly Ghost," Virginia Postrel says the popular libertarian slogan "government doesn't work" is "not so good. . . .It thereby jettisons the entire classical liberal tradition — which is very much supportive of 'government' properly constrained — in favor of a vague anarchism." This is surprising, coming from someone who has written so many eloquent articles showing that voluntary exchange is far superior to government programs.

One need not be an anarchist (vague or otherwise) to recognize the obvious — that government doesn't work. It doesn't deliver the mail on time, keep the cities safe, or educate our children properly. Its War on Poverty and its War on Drugs are massive failures. Millions of Americans have lost faith in government precisely because governments everywhere have reached the inevitable stage where nothing about them works as promised.

When I appeared on hundreds of talk shows as the Libertarian Party's presidential candidate in 1996, often someone would say, "You exaggerate; many government programs work well." But when I asked for a single example, the answer almost always was a deafening silence.

Only two programs were ever offered as evidence of government efficiency. One was the interstate highway system, but no one could explain why a program to build highways inevitably wound up spending billions of our tax dollars on such things as a new Denver airport that no one in Denver wanted and an L.A. subway system that Californians consider a joke. Another person suggested the Weather Bureau — but he couldn't explain why TV and newspaper weathermen, relying on government forecasts, are the butt of so many jokes.

Why don't these and other programs work correctly? The answer is simple. Anytime you turn anything over to the government, you transform what was a commercial, medical, social, safety, financial, or military matter into a political issue — to be decided by politicians like Bill Clinton, Newt Gingrich, Teddy Kennedy, and Jesse Helms. And guess how they make their decisions?

Conservatives recognize that government is incapable of eliminating poverty, discrimination, smoking, drinking, and many other supposed ills. But when the target is crime, foreign dictators, pornography, drugs, abortion, cloning, or any other item on their menu, government is suddenly transformed into Superman. Just allocate enough money, and the problem will be solved. And if the problem isn't solved, that's proof that not enough money was spent. Transpose the menus and you get the definition of a liberal.

Libertarians, however, know that government doesn't work — even when it tries to do something we want. Government is coercion — pure and simple. Every government program involves forced activity, forcible prohibition, and/or forced financing — or else it wouldn't be a government program. And there's no way to make force efficient or benevolent; it's just force. Thus libertarians are continually looking for ways to take functions — any functions — away from government, because they want to reduce government force to the absolute minimum possible.

What is the absolute minimum possible? We might argue endlessly about that, but the question is really irrelevant. What's important today is that most people reading this magazine — and, in fact, most Americans — want much less government than they have now. Once we've harnessed that antigovernment sentiment and reduced government to a fraction of its present size, we can argue over how much further we should go.

But realize that, when that happens, the free market will give the best minds in the world an incentive to devise profitable methods (that we can't even imagine today) by which the free market can perform functions we might think now can be performed only by government. That isn't a "vague anarchism"; it's a reasonable belief that free human beings are much more creative, productive, and efficient than government.

In the meantime, we move in the wrong direction if we attribute to government an efficiency or benevolence it can't possibly possess. That's turning government into a Santa Claus — someone who will grant us our wishes if we're good little children and ask for the proper things. In short, it's a fantasy. No, Virginia, there is no Santa Claus. Government doesn't work.
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Harry Browne

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Biu7bJAfVNI

I would also let him know that government and the private sector are always at odds with one another.

Government tries in all efforts to control the economy. It is its very natural tendency to do so.

Additionally, the last thing the government is - is our voice. Think about it. 6 wars, 15 trillion in debt, civil liberties being eroded, the Constitution ripped to shreds, and back room deals blending companies & the government through a method called corporatism. Is that what he would call his voice? I call it Fascism like Benito Mussolini was for Italy back in the 1930's. This is the real hazard of our time. You know the whole Solynedra scandal where the government took our tax paying dollars to loan out 500 million to a solar company that went bankrupt? It's that kind of stuff.

It's going on all over the place. The whole military industrial complex is a syndrome of corporatism. Its where huge military weapon companies take advantage of their power & influence and entice congress to provide them vast amounts of funding. It's pretty bad stuff.

Ron Paul wants a complete break of government from the corporate world. Let the market be the market. And shackle the over-bearing tendencies of this government and their desire to control every aspect of our lives with the laws of the constitution.

Ron Pauls book "End the Fed" is about ending a few banking elite making decisions with our money. We need to be able to print our own money - where it's not loaned to us at interest, from a private bank like it is today.

So there *does* need to be healthy regulation in banking. Right now 12 men sit in a private room and decide what the interest rate of our money is. How do they know? This type of regulation is completely disastrous.

But these industries regulate themselves much much better in the free market, then government could ever do. How does the government know better for my business then me?

Since the government and business are on the opposite ends of the spectrum, it has no idea or knowledge of what the free market actually is. Regulation is in essence a restriction of a business to perform efficient, effective, and safe practices to operate in the free market.

It is not the intention of the regulation that is the problem to the free market, but it's un-intended consequences.

You received some good points on this thread. I really wish it was a occupation of Washington instead of Wall Street. The government should have said NO on the Bailouts, Government was wrong. Remind your friend of the governmenbt response to Katrina, compared to all the thousands of individuals who just felt they had to help somehow and did.

I wish you well!

"Corporations are creatures of the State, created by it and having two privileges that protect them from market pressures. First, corporate liability for damages to others is automatically limited by fiat; and second, responsibility is shifted away from individuals to a fictional entity." – Merce Rampart

Ask your friend who he thinks the government, with all it's new-found powers to regulate, will listen to; the rich banker without whom none of the ones in charge would have been elected, or some destitute serf begging for crumbs outside Goldman headquarters?

Also, the big difference between the government and private enterprise, is that government, at least as envisiooned by non libertarians, is a monopoly by definition. Nowhere to go where they cannot get you, if you don't like what they're doing. With private enterprise, even Goldman, if it wasn't for government, the best they could hope for was people handing over money freely. So, instead, Goldman focuses on championing a public indoctrination system, ensuring a steady stream of well meaning but clueless drones like your friend indirectly fighting for them, while naively thinking they're doing the opposite.

And BTW: The alternative to the bailout was letting the banks go under. Along with all those whose wealth and possessions were dependent on the continued existence of the banks. If that meant the entire population of Greater New York literally starved to death overnight, that would still be preferable to one single penny being taken from tax payers in order to cover the mistakes of a bunch of bankers.

you can commit fraud, steel, print money, counterfeit...

Because it's a slippery slope to corporatism as is any size of government to tyranny.

your leftist buddy there presents the usual half-baked argument that it's the "gov't" which can "save us from the private sector".

What you need to show him is that the gov't created the Federal Reserve, and gave these banks the monopoly on our currency. Without the gov't regulation to begin with, these "banks" would never have gotten to the place they are, because of competition.
So, it is the "gov't regulations" that your buddy enshrines, which are in fact the cause of the problem. Additional regulations only makes the problem worse by more intervention.
The ONLY cure is to eliminate the gov't regulation which created this banking mess, and that is to eliminate the Federal Reserve Act and restore sound currency to the economy.

Government regulations and regulators are not what they are cracked up to be.

The regulations are heavily influenced by the industries they are supposed to regulate. The regulations often include onerous and costly conditions, the only purpose of which is to make it very difficult for smaller businesses to enter the market. They also include mandates that require special compliance audits by professionals (lawyers and accountants), which again makes it virtually impossible for a small business to compete.

The regulators are usually young graduates who are merely using the government agency as a stepping stone to higher ambitions, such as, employment at the law offices that represent the big corporations, or the big corporations themselves.

So much for the need of the government to protect us. We are the government and the people who work for the government as just pliable and easily manipulated as all of us. They don't serve as regulators for altruistic purposes.

Just consider the accounting profession of which I am a member. I can write a book about the misdemeanors of accountants, audit failures, etc. If the accounting profession has a hard time to live up to their ideals, how much more for a government bureaucracy where nobody really carries any personal responsibility for their actions.

Shouldn't regulators have prevented the BP oil spill, the Madoff affair, the housing and banking collapse? We can go on and on.

After the dot.com bubble, they grabbed two scapegoats, Kozlowski (of Polish extraction with no ties to Princeton or Yale) and Ebbers (a Canadian). They used their trials to demonstrate to the gullible public that your government takes care of you, while a thousand other crooks in white collars escaped unscathed. Shareholders were creamed. same with the housing bubble, although to date nobody has been prosecuted.

Balance the budget? Easy. Close down the SEC and save a billion dollars a year. Put up a couple of billboards: Stay away from Wall Street. What is their about Wall Street and fraud that you don't understand? Better know what you are doing. You are on your own. Your government, just as ignorant as you, can't protect you.

All we need is respect for the law, including and above all the Constitution. All violators will have their day in court and it would be far less pleasant than "bribing" a regulator, or paying the token fine (a favorite at the SEC), but not admitting to any infraction.

The SEC (billion dollar a year budget) takes the cake. Management screws the shareholders. The SEC has to be seen to be interested. After an investigation that only makes the lawyers and accountants rich (those who used to work for the SEC, but now work for these professional firms), the SEC slaps on a fine, not on management, but on the company! - often hundreds of millions of dollars. The shareholders get screwed twice! (I'm not making this up.) Your government at work for you.

Look at past performance.

The most logical and important reason regulation is bad is due to basic economic principles.

In order for the profit and loss system to function at its best and naturally sort out those individuals and enterprises that best or worst utilize scarce resources (the creation or destruction of real wealth) capital must be allowed to flow freely to where it is most needed by individuals freely engaging in mutually-beneficial transactions (this is how real wealth is created).

This cannot be achieved by interference or regulation of any government, group, institution or body because the tendency then is to impede the flow of the scarce resources, thus requiring more resources (the destruction of real wealth) than would have been necessary had the capital just been allowed to flow freely.

To make things worse, history shows that once governments, etc., are given or take the power/ usurp authority to regulate, they grow and become even more totalitarian.

That is the answer in a nutshell though much more could be said and btw, your friend is incorrect.

It's unAmerican to trust the government.. so, what type of person do we have here?

He doesn't understand the basics of tyranny.

And, that is, to bring us into slavery.
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A coward is much more exposed to quarrels than a man of spirit.
Thomas Jefferson

http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/t/thomas_jefferson...
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gDhR1R3S0s&feature=related

Take a look at the videos on this post

http://www.dailypaul.com/176243/money-masters

Try to expose a few concepts to this person, though it may be difficult.

Though the Govt and its agencies provide an appearance of oversight and security. They actually provide corporations with a 'Govt Stamp of Approval.' Somehow, many people have been lulled into thinking that there is someone (ie Big Guv) looking out for them and their best interest. Big Mama is gonna just coddle you, and make sure nothing happens. But then, low and behold, bad things happen, and no one is held accountable. Usually those to blame whether in Govt or Business end up reaping the benefits, with out penalty.

The Failure: Time and again.
FDA: aside from countless bad food outbreaks, it allows Genetically Modified Foods and cloned meats and will not required them labeled as such, for starters
SEC: Despite countless laws on books, enforces minimum, allows Enron, Worldcom, Madoff, Derivatives, for starters
DODefnse: Despite spending more annually than the rest of the world combined, we have 0, Zero, fighter jets on the Eastern seabord of the US on 911. I dont know how many jets we had then, but AF presently has over 2400 fighters. But not one near our capital a half hour after both towers were hit. I digress.
IRS: actively pursues lower and middle income earners while spending little time or resources investigating corporations
THE FED: parades around as a govt agency, uses its Govt stamped paper and digital computer inputs to influence every aspect of american life, taxing our taxed earnings by lessening their value while it sits in their banks or our hands.

Ron Paul believes in the Liberty and the rule of law, as they pertain to individuals; people like you and me and 'him,' not corporations. Govt more often gets in the way of people taking corporations to court or finding full redress.

Another wise man once wrote the following about corporations. "If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their Fathers conquered...I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies... The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs." This we all know is the stance of Thomas Jefferson and Ron Paul.

I believe that if 'he' could drop his guard, as most of us probably had to the first time we heard about another Republican from Texas, for a second, he might start to see RP differently.

RP is going directly at the center of what is causing our problems, the central bank. You must ask this man, to follow it all the way out, and stay diligent in his quest for truth.

I think there is a logical problem that arises.

I think there is strong agreement that the government has a role in preventing fraud. Through the courts, jails, et. as well as making sure businesses are being honest in their claims.

But there is also strong agreement that when governments gets big, it becomes a tool for special interests to use. They use it to grant themselves monopolies, power, and money.

However, government needs strength in order to be anti-fraud. Government, even at the very least, needs to have the ability to enforce the rule of law. When the government gets this strength, it becomes big.

I'm from Canada and in British Columbia our provincial government made a regulation that states that all people in BC must now have car insurance from the private company called ICBC. Meaning that all insurance competition is eliminated. Meaning that if there is no competition the insurance rates will go up. If there were competition like the rest of canada we would have cheaper car insurance here in BC. Another note is that usually if there is lots of competition which government regulations diminish, the competitors will compete with inovative ideas on how to get the job done better to serve its customers better, while if you eliminate competition there is no need to compete and be innovative thereby costing the consumers more for the product and less quality as well...

Competition is created by people who have more money in their pockets or have less regulations on them Eg. Taxes, Licenses, Certifications, etcs. all these things stop a poor man from starting a business because it costs money for those things. There is high input into a business with more regulation and no output until it becomes established, meaning higher risk.

Another point is that regulation from the government costs us extra money as opposed to regulation from a company on it's own employees etc. If you get regulation from the government we need extra people involved in order to get the job done.
Example: You the consumer(buyer), then you need the seller, and then you need a regulator(government).

In free market the seller is the regulator. You the buyer make the risk of buying but your tax burden is dropped from the problem.

How much is that Tax burden???
In 1950 in Canada Income Tax on citizens was 3% on those who made over $3000.00/month. In 1950 only the rich could be taxed because majority of people didn't make that much money. Now it's like 17% or more on all income earners. That doesn't include Sales tax where we have to not only be taxed on everything we earn but also get taxed on everything we buy meaning a double wammy! In BC it's like 15% for sales tax to the province and the federal government. Making a total of like 32% taxes of all your income for the year.

If you had the choice to deregulate and shrink government you would be able to put about 30% more back into your pocket to use to help build up the economy. That's why it's better to deregulate. Get rid of the middle man)Tax Collector).