Thursday, March 31, 2011

A Response to Max Borders

The following post is part of an application for a scholarship from Templeton Press. It is in response to a video from Max Borders, a link to which has been posted below this note.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gIGpzoZxuA

Mister Borders, have you ever seen the film Falling Down? It stars Michael Douglas as a man who snaps under the pressures of everyday life during a traffic jam and goes on a journey to find his ex-wife so he can see his daughter on her birthday. There's a scene, about halfway through the film, where Michael Douglas goes into an army surplus store, looking for some boots. Here, he discovers that the store owner is racist, homophobic, and a neo-Nazi. Thinking that Michael Douglas is of a similar mindset, he takes him to the back room of his store. In the back room, he shows Michael Douglas a menagerie of disturbing things, such as Nazi porn books and a used canister of gas from the Holocaust. The store owner keeps remarking to Douglas "We're the same!" Douglas eventually says "No, we are not the same. I am an American. You are a sick freak."
What does this have to do with regulation? I'm not sure, your video just reminded me of it. It also reminded me of a kind of motto I find applies well to most political matters: find the middle ground. Should regulation be intrusive to small business? I suppose not, but you also need to consider the fact that most regulations are in place for the benefit of the consumer. Deregulating all business puts a lot of faith in business practitioners to be able to know what consumers want, and more importantly, what is safe for consumers. For example, let's say that the grape jelly I noticed you putting in that barbecue sauce hits upon a certain combination that results in food poisoning for some people? It's unlikely, but there's not a good chance that you'd be able to test it for certain or even think much of it. However, someone who's trained to examine food products would do both.
The whole thing is a matter of idealism vs. practicality, and in this case, practicality wins for the most part. There's obviously a lot of factors to consider, and I don't' think I can cover everything in under five hundred words, but what I know for sure is that putting matters entirely in the hands of the people will not work. The general populous on the whole, frankly, is not smart enough to handle such a task, and I don't think someone who puts grape jelly in his barbecue sauce is, either.
Apologies for the snark, but I seriously can't get over that.

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