Current Events — HabitableZone

Current Events » in reply to What those people are thinking...

"...corporate and regulator negligence..."
ER — (archived)

Well. Now we're making some progress. Corporations can be negligent, and regulation is necessary--and can be suborned. And abused too, I'll grant.

It is obvious that all activity involves some element of risk, even picking fruit off a tree means you can fall off the ladder. Risk can be managed, perhaps not eliminated, but minimized. Risks can also be shared, diluted if you like. But this is a management issue, not an ideological one. Those who have a vested financial interest in how an activity they control is carried out simply cannot be trusted to look much further than their own profit and loss. Business or bureacracy, the community, through law, has every right to act in a supervisory capacity.

The criticism of a too-powerful or overly nit-picking government bureaucracy is a valid one, and I do not mean to belittle it. But too often I see that criticism used simply as a convenient political tactic to avoid expensive and troublesome, but essential, checks and balances. The major purpose of government is to protect the community from the abusers of power, whether those abusers are foreign enemies, domestic criminals, or economic bullies.

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