By JOHN BARTLIT
New Mexico Citizens
for Clean Air & Water 

Regulation Provides Freedom To Trade Smartly, Far & Wide

The Fourth of July is a time to think about our country and how it grew.

A busy squawking these days says “kill regulation” so prosperity will rise. Regulation is likened to a Trojan horse rolled out to snatch away property rights. Yet, our history, with its origins in England and further back, tells a very different story. The course of property rights was conceived, shaped, and secured in regulations needed for business to thrive.

Why are these pictures so conflicting? As usual, mindsets depend on which scraps of the whole story are shown. Large portions are never spoken of when hawking policies to voters. Speakers for commerce forget the cache of laws laid down to put trade on the fast track.

Today the pride of our nation is the rule of law. “Rule” means regulation. Long ago, property rights had beginnings in standardizing. How big is an acre of gullied land and an acre-foot of water? What does a dollar or a pound mean? Until buyers and sellers have the same answers, building business with distant strangers is not possible.

In ages past, business saw the need to have standard weights and measures. Governments took up the task and property rights made more sense.

Sellers went traveling to find new customers. Complaints came up when sharp deviances in measured weights salted the sales. To strengthen property rights, governments standardized more … and added scale checkers.

As commerce spread, so did problems. A buyer would order “12 big pigs”, but the seller swore he heard “10 piggies”. People thought property rights needed to be clearer. So, the contract was conceived. Today, government venues define legal contracts in volumes of rules. Government creates a giant system to catch cheaters. We know it as the court system. The system has courthouses, judges, trials, rulings, oversight and penalties. More government role gives property rights more clout.

Once government assures that contracts can be enforced, business prospects soar. Affirmed property rights undergird new engines of prosperity. The engines take many forms, such as loans, credit, collateral, insurance, partnerships, companies, and national markets. All depend on records of reliable ownership that are made trustable by a court system.

The entire design has great power to raise personal and national wealth. Again the irony. A steady hand of government is vital. Firm regulation is the bedrock. Yet, the groups that depend so heavily on government rules start calling rules the killer of prosperity. Politics decides which parts of the picture are forgotten and which are kept fresh in mind.

With such different puzzle pieces, how do we know which pieces fit with the truth? A way to find out is to look at the world. Look at nations that are much poorer than the U.S., whose citizens are so much poorer than Americans. Think about the Congo, Myanmar, and Burundi They are poorer not because they have more regulation than we have. It is that they have less. Less developed regulation does not yield more freedom. We find less.

Citizens have trouble proving what they own. They cannot protect their property from thievery or pollution. The rule of law, the pride of our country, is too weak. When property is chancy, the credit and insurance that are vital to business are iffy. Don’t take my word. Ask an economist or entrepreneur.

Don’t get me wrong: more regulation per se does not assure the most prosperity. This idea is as foolish as the frequent line that regulation kills prosperity. The crux is in the details. Some say, “Focus where some rule, at the moment, seems to help another interest more than mine.” Left out of the debate is, “Keep in mind that prosperity for me and you is built on the bedrock of government rules.”

Too few voters in either party buy bumper stickers that implore, “Regulation Requires Judgment”.