books on regulation vs. deregulation.?

[haaaylee]

are there any good books, or articles, on this? when i hear my socialist friends try to blame capitalism this always comes up. that deregulation is at fault.

 

[Epic]

There hasn't been a full de-regulation, just changing regulation.

The point that needs to be driven home is that regulation is corporatism, because they will be controlled by the companies/individuals who are affected. This process is known as regulatory capture. One of the reasons why this happens is because of "concentrated benefits, diverse costs". The federal regulations book has some 70,000 pages. No politician is ever going to be elected or not based on his stance toward one of those. It doesn't matter enough to regular people. But for companies it makes good sense to lobby for regulations to be written to block out smaller competitors, give them extra customers, etc.

Regulation, in general, serves as a tool for the largest interests to plunder the smaller ones.

Most companies lobby for increased regulation of certain types. Timothy Carney has great examples in his columns at the examiner online. http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/o...hy-regulation-helps-the-big-guys38690727.html

Google for articles on mises.org:
http://mises.org/story/2293
http://mises.org/story/2320
http://mises.org/story/3163

Glass Steagall was a handout to JP Morgan
http://mises.org/journals/qjae/pdf/qjae1_1_1.pdf

The Federal Reserve is also regulation in itself - so were Fannie and Freddie.

You can't have Madoff without the SEC providing him fake regulatory cover.

Often, regulations are designed to make companies do things that those companies would have done anyway if they had adequate competition, but they don't because of previous government interventions and handouts, legislated monopolies, etc. to those same companies that they now want to regulate.

Consider net neutrality: http://mises.org/story/2139

 

[haaaylee]

well, lack of enough regulations would be a more proper way to put it i suppose.

 

[emazur]

The Big Ripoff is supposed to be good and is on my to-buy list:
http://www.amazon.com/Big-Ripoff-Business-Government-Steal/dp/0471789070/lewrockwell/
Tom Woods' Meltdown talks about regulation and the '08 meltdown:
http://www.amazon.com/Meltdown-Free-Market-Collapsed-Government-Bailouts/dp/1596985879


Did Deregulation Cause the Financial Crisis?
http://www.cato.org/pubs/policy_report/v31n4/cpr31n4-1.html

govt. regulators are not angels
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/business/july-dec08/indymac_12-23.html

 

[heavenlyboy34]

LRC has 10 pages of articles and so on about the subject here.

 

[erowe1]

If the issue is the banking crisis in particular, then see the articles the others have posted. Also, Meltdown, by Woods.

Here's an article dispelling the myth that Bush was a deregulator:
http://reason.com/archives/2008/12/10/bushs-regulatory-kiss-off

And on regulation more generally, multiple episodes of Milton Friedman's great series, Free to Choose, address that quite well:
http://www.ideachannel.tv/