Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Comment on this quote Share via Email Print this Page [1-20] of 59 Regulation quotesRegulation QuotesRegulation Next 20 quotes Clinton realized that America could not economically afford the Protocol Gore negotiated. The Clinton-Gore's Energy Department found Kyoto would lead to $400 billion a year in lost output. ... Gore tries to throw Enron on the back of the current administration. But it was Enron Board Chairman Kenneth Lay who sold Clinton-Gore on Kyoto's cap and trade system. Gore, Clinton, and Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin met with Lay on Aug. 7, 1997 to go over goals and procedures for the Kyoto session. ... The corporate smoking memo here was not that from an ExxonMobil adviser to oppose Dr. Watson, but the Enron internal memo saying Kyoto 'would do more to promote Enron's business than almost any other regulatory initiative'.~ Ken Adelman Through the rapid proliferation of laws reaching every corner of human existence, “the government is manufacturing more criminals now than ever before.” The list of illegal activities includes more minutiae than one would think possible. Beer-makers are barred from listing alcohol content on bottles, and liquor distilleries cannot advertise on TV. Filling one’s own prairie pothole can land a property owner in jail, as can protecting private property from unlawful intruders. Placing handbills in neighbors’ mailboxes is strictly prohibited, and attempting to sell nectarines of an improper size is a federal offense. Companies are no longer allowed to give salaried professionals partial days off without pay, and in Texas it is a crime to call oneself an interior designer without the government’s permission. It is perhaps easier to recount all that remains legal than all that is now prohibited.~ Jonathan H. Adler Flowers don't open to the clock but to the sunshine spontaneous;for modern humans that manner of instinct is now extraneous.~ Astrid Alauda In fact, the big corporations who understand the regulatory game can actually benefit from it. They can lobby for expensive regulations only the largest corporations can afford, effectively keeping upstarts and competitors at bay.~ Radley Balko Historically, it has been Big Business, not consumers or progressives, who have been primarily responsible for creating most government regulatory agencies. ... Indeed, virtually all regulatory agencies have had the effect of limiting entry and competition in the industries they oversee.~ Bruce Bartlett It must be admitted that the tendency of the human race toward liberty is largely thwarted, especially in France. This is greatly due to a fatal desire -- learned from the teachings of antiquity -- that our writers on public affairs have in common: They desire to set themselves above mankind in order to arrange, organize, and regulate it according to their fancy.~ Frederic Bastiat And now that the legislators and do-gooders have so futilely inflicted so many systems upon society, may they finally end where they should have begun: May they reject all systems, and try liberty; for liberty is an acknowledgment of faith in God and His works.~ Frederic Bastiat You know all what I'm about to, what I've said, and you know what I've done, and you know what we're doing, and you know -- I know what you're doing.~ Joe Biden Power always corrupts, and the power of government to tell people how to live their lives or to transfer money from those who earn it to others is always a temptation to corruption. Taxes and regulations reduce people’s incentive to produce wealth, and government transfer programs reduce people’s incentive to work, to save, and to help family and friends in case of sickness, disability, or retirement. ...[I]t is nonetheless clear that government enterprises are less efficient, less innovative, and more wasteful than private firms.... [C]ompare what it’s like to call American Express versus the IRS to correct problems. Or compare a private apartment building with public housing.~ David Boaz But while capitalism may be a convenient scapegoat, it did not cause any of these problems. Indeed, whatever one wishes to call the unruly mixture of freedom and government controls that made up our economic and political system during the last three decades, one cannot call it capitalism.~ Yaron Brook As the federal government has progressively become larger over the decades, every significant introduction of government regulation, taxation and spending has been to the benefit of some big business.~ Timothy P. Carney Perhaps the removal of trade restrictions throughout the world would do more for the cause of universal peace than can any political union of peoples separated by trade barriers.~ Frank Chodorov Censorship is contagious, and experience with this culture of regulation teaches us that regulatory enthusiasts herald each new medium of communications as another opportunity to spread the disease.~ Robert Corn-Revere The Radical Centre seem to have the same obsession with control that the fascists and communists had, but unlike them, it is control for control's sake rather than in the service of some clear ideology ... They do not seek the triumph of Volk or the dictatorship of the proletariat, they just seek to replace all social interactions with politically mediated interactions. They seek to regulate everything via a total state that ... just wants a world in which nothing whatsoever is private, everything is political. Their symbol is not the Hammer and Sickle or the Swastika, it is the CCTV camera.~ Perry de Havilland It is no coincidence that some of America’s most lethargic industries—steel, footwear, rubber, textiles—are also among the most heavily protected.~ Thomas DiLorenzo [Trade licensing] almost inevitably becomes a tool in the hands of a special producer group to maintain a monopoly position at the expense of the rest of the public. There is no way to avoid this result.~ Milton Friedman The Federal Reserve System is treated by nearly all economists with reverence. On no matter is their instruction of the young in the subtlety and benignity of established institutions more admiring-or, in broad effect, more successful. Corporations are flawed by an instinct for monopoly. Trade unions interfere with the market, urge trade restrictions, resist new technology and thus obstruct progress, and they can fall victim to extortionists and racketeers. The regulatory agencies of the government are notably imperfect instruments of economic guidance. The Federal Reserve System is not totally above criticism. It makes many mistakes but these are always interesting errors of judgment. they are examined not critically but respectfully to discover why men of insight went wrong. That for such error anyone should be sacked or even seriously rebuked is, for economists, nearly unthinkable. This approval goes back to the origins and can be highly negligent of circumstance. The most widely read account of the genesis of the System tells glowingly of its birth in the closing weeks of 1913 when the Federal Reserve Act was passed by Congress and signed by President Wilson.~ John Kenneth Galbraith The great dialectic in our time is not, as anciently and by some still supposed, between capital and labor; it is between economic enterprise and the state.~ John Kenneth Galbraith Regulation -- which is based on force and fear -- undermines the moral base of business dealings. It becomes cheaper to bribe a building inspector than to meet his standards of construction. A fly-by-night securities operator can quickly meet all the S.E.C. requirements, gain the inference of respectability, and proceed to fleece the public. In an unregulated economy, the operator would have had to spend a number of years in reputable dealings before he could earn a position of trust sufficient to induce a number of investors to place funds with him. Protection of the consumer by regulation is thus illusory.~ Alan Greenspan In the general course of human nature, A power over a man’s subsistence amounts to a power over his will.~ Alexander Hamilton Next 20 quotes Share on Facebook Tweet Email Print