Checking In

I have been a little scarce on the old blog lately.  I've got reasons, the biggest of which is dealing with the passing of a good friend.  I would write something about that, but I have to get through the real-life job of honoring him on Saturday.  The other thing that keeps me from ranting and raving on here is that I'm feeling a little like a broken record, there's just so much about current events that is wrong and crooked that my prophet-o-meter is on freaking overload.  I wish I had Elisha's ability to summon some she-bears to devour certain people, except I think I would make a better choice than some random smarty-pants kids.
I just can't keep up with the outrage, so I'm going to try to talk about an idea that has popped up in a couple of different outrages and lean in to something constructive.  Here's the argument that I have heard in the rationale for both the repeal of environmental regulations (including the structural decimation of the EPA) as well as in the recent legislation regarding internet privacy regulations (the one where the government allows Verizon to sell your internet data to the highest bidder).  I'm not going to go into the negative aspects of either of these moves, because I think you probably know where I stand on that.  I'm going to address what I consider to be the only almost-rational defense of these maneuvers.  In a debate, if you can discredit or disprove the opponent's weakest argument, you might win points, if you can discredit their strongest argument, well you win.
Here's the strongest argument: excessive regulations (either environmental, corporate or otherwise) hold back growth and innovation by making undue demands of those who would drive new ventures or come up with new ideas.  Doctor Frankenstein felt this way about the silly superstitions and fears of the local villagers that were standing in the way of his great scientific achievement.  I probably don't need to remind you that the monster was actually the least monstrous character in Frankenstein. The logic behind de-regulation is that it allows good things to happen.  The shadow argument that often gets touted is that regulations are usually only marginally successful at preventing malfeasance anyway. So in total, the argument goes, regulations are basically just things that hold back the good, growing, innovative type things and really don't prevent the bad, destructive, immoral type things.
This is sometimes true, but it is far from universal.  If you want to see the proof of concept that the EPA has done some good, look at a picture of Cleveland, Pittsburgh or Detroit from the early 1970s. Since I lived in Pittsburgh, here's the burg in 1970:

And here is now:

Now, there are certain differences in camera quality and maybe weather and time of day, but you get the idea. Clean air and water have transformed Pittsburgh from the punchline of jokes about ash and smog into a city that consistently ranks in the top five places to live in the country.  I may be a bit biased but it is a really nice town that no longer misses the steel mills and dirty industry that used to be its only way of life.
Do environmental regulations cut down on the demand for coal?  Absolutely.  Do they make it harder for companies to extract natural gas and other resources? Yes. Do they limit the kinds of cars that can be produced and sold? Yep.  Are any of those things really a net minus if you factor in the external costs of whatever expansion might come from peeling back some rules? Not enough to make it worth breathing toxic fumes on top of Mount Washington.
Now let's consider the interweb thing, because this is some high level villainy.  Verizon and Comcast thought it was just so not fair that they, as internet service providers, were not allowed to get in on the same sweet ad-traffic lucre as Google and Yahoo all because of the fact that internet access is rapidly becoming sort of like roads and phone lines, you know, infrastructure.  The interweb has become, for better and worse, a seriously important part of our lives.  It is honestly no longer a luxury.  The comptroller of Maryland, the place that collects our state taxes, just sent us a nice letter the other day that requested that we no longer burden them by sending crude paper checks to pay our quarterly state taxes, and if we would be so kind, please pay online.  I'm totally fine with that (at least as fine as I can be with paying taxes) because I'm all up in this internet thing.  But some people get hives if you tell them to email something.  We are rapidly approaching a point where internet access is going to be like electricity, pretty darn necessary to all but those people who keep getting their own shows on the Discovery Channel.
The argument here goes that we are just strangling out poor little Verizon and Comcast by not letting them sell advertisers our information.  If we would just take off their infrastructure owning handcuffs, they would totally be able to make things cheaper for everyone and help the poor and save the spotted owls and bring back unicorns and every good thing would happen to everyone everywhere.
Yeah cause that's how letting corporations like Enron, Goldman Sachs, Johns-Manville and that lot do whatever they want usually plays out.  I just hope having our privacy violated doesn't turn out to cause some kind of cancer.