Friday, February 16, 2007

The ruling class's mentality

"I love the free market, but the fact is more concentration means less competition, and these markets are less free than they should be. And this Commission is about regulation -- regulators. I always worry a little when I hear regulators shy away from regulation talk."

-- Senator Byron Dorgan (D., North Dakota) addressing members of the Federal Communications Commission at a recent hearing.

I always worry when politicians hire people to "regulate" the "free market." Some people don't appreciate the irony in their words. Today's Wall Street Journal tries to explain it to Dorgan. He won't get it.

"If you're wondering where the new Democratic majority in Congress is inclined to steer telecom policy, look no further than Mr. Dorgan's comment above. Note how he pays lip service to free markets while ultimately favoring more regulation for its own sake.

"But more regulation is the last thing today's telecom industry needs, at least if empirical evidence is any indication ..."

The full article isn't available online unless you're a subscriber; sorry. But the main idea was to point out the cluelessness of Sen. Dorgan's statement anyway.

2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

This is a very stupid post. One can almost smell the smirking on the blogger's fat face. And so cleverly citing an equally smirky WSJ editorial because, ha-ha, a senator made the common-sense and mainstream suggestion that "free markets" need some "regulation". In fact, that may even be what "Congress" meant when it passed "laws" to, um, regulate the market. But you clever little boys caught the Senator calling on a federal body to do it's job. But you caught him calling for "regulation" and that's one of those dirty words among stupid right-wingers, college sophomore republicans and sniggering fools at WSJ editorial page. (Don't they even read their own news pages?) And you caught the senator saying that word. Oh what a fraud he is. Oh how clever you are.

11:04 AM  
Blogger B.W. Richardson said...

The First Amendment protects the right to say and write speciosity, so I will merely reply that I was not smirking when I wrote this post, and it is sad to read someone so eager to use his/her First Amendment rights to defend one of the 100 enemies of the First Amendment who sit in the U.S. Senate.

5:51 PM  

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