The phrase I believe you have in mind is “regulatory capture.” The less we regulate, the less reason corporations have to buy and sell legislatures and government agencies. Zero regulation is not enough, but we’ve gotten to the point where the gov buts in when it shouldn’t. Right now the Feds tell manufacturers how many gallons a toilet should flush. That (and many other laws) is crazy.
Well said. Government makes slavery the more attractive option to business. Government also has a bad habit of costing business money as a means of punishing them or extorting their compliance.
I guess seeing both sides of the situation is a conservative thing.
There was a company here in Michigan that was going to build a clean coal fired power plant. They spent millions, scouting locations, paying for environmental impact studies and a boatload of other costs. This went on for several years with the state and feds coming up with new demands all the time. This spring, the company was told that their permit would be denied due to a lack of demand. Just a few days later they turned around and approved a wind farm despite the lack of demand they cited as a reason for denying the clean coal plant.
A few years back, a minor gasoline spill cost us the main pipeline down the center of the state as well as the big refinery that fed it in Alma. They were harassed into shutting the line down permanently despite they fact that the line was undergoing a major overhaul over its whole length.
The more recent Embridge oil spill is a different situation. There are some obvious problems with they way they dealt with problems but nobody is talking about the fact that the state hasn’t had the required state inspector on the job for several years. (A state inspector might have spotted problems and required that they be fixed.)