A common misconception is that deregulation is equivalent to complete lawlessness. Many argue inside this paradigm, attempting to paint the deregulation movement as pro-pollution, pro-slavery, pro-fraud, and pro-danger. Yet, all of these things are more-or-less outlawed without “regulation”.
Polluting is a property crime and a aggressive assault upon the health of others against their will. Slavery is extortion. Fraud is a property crime equivalent to theft. The makers and retailers of unsafe products would likely be liable for negligent harm, possibly fraud if they lied about the safety quality of the product.
In an “unregulated” environment, companies could only…
…“pollute” their own land/air/water without being sued or violently shut down.
…hire employees who prefer to work for them over alternative employments, which may include jobs that have less pay or openings but better safety standards or vice versa.
…make product descriptions, contracts, and accounting reports that cannot be shown to be an intentional or negligent distortion of the truth.
…make products that are potentially harmful only if they clearly disclaim such potential to customers.
From a strict profitability standpoint, companies may benefit from avoiding “questionable” practices, simply for PR reasons. Or, they may REQUIRE quality standards to attract competent labor and compete with other producers. For example, for the same price, would the average person prefer to purchase brand name pain medicine or street heroine?
Finally, simply because something is regulated by government does not mean that government regulations WILL AUTOMATICALLY achieve their goals. Pollution is still horrible today, even with the EPA. Moreover, the largest polluter in the land - the Dept. of Defense - is not bound to obey any EPA mandates. Drugs that are passed by the FDA often turn out to be dangerous in practice, and the manufacturers are sued. Other regulations, like minimum wage, may not fail directly (although there is surely a lot of undocumented work taking place below minimum wage), but the regulations themself distort the economy for the worse. In the min. wage example, it drives up unemployment, especially in the young and unskilled.
Then there is the danger of regulatory capture, which is a near universal condition of our monopoly, government regulation. Politically influential producers use the regulatory bodies to allow their products to be profitably marketable, but purposefully create regulations that disadvantage their competitors. It is little different from the old practice of gov’t monopoly grants.
Thus, there are myriad reasons that gov’t regulation is unnecessary, creates more costs that benefits, or becomes a source of injustice and poor economy.
