Presidential election, 2016

[Bob Butler 54]

(12-31-2016, 12:14 PM)Warren Dew Wrote: In this case, though, no one would have been hurt, if the administration had merely kept the policy of requiring proof of health insurance.  In fact, with Obamacare, they wouldn't even had to require proof of health insurance, since that was verified through tax law.

Instead, they used excessive regulatory enforcement to force people into employee status and take away peoples' control over their own lives, because the progressive ideal is to require everyone to live the way the government thinks they should, rather than the way they personally would prefer.

Well, we come back to the vile stereotype again.  You're presenting yourself as the definitive expert on progressive motivations, though you clearly dislike the progressive approach.  I feel like I could talk about the New Deal, Four Freedoms, and UDHR Article 25 indefinitely and it will go in one ear, out the other.  You seem unable to grasp the notion of people actually believing in what they say they believe in.  No, you have your stereotype, your strawman, and  you won't budge off of it.  All conversation gets immediately forced right back to your prejudices.

I didn't respond to the above note right away, as I had a shopping trip in mind.  As the Starks warned, winter is coming.  I was in need of a new gas container to keep my snow blower running.  I got to the hardware store, and sure enough, the only tanks available had the new fangled nozzles.  You know, the ones that won't dispense gas unless you twist this, push on that, stand on one's right foot, and pray to an appropriate deity?  I was about to complain about this to the sales guy, but he beat me to the punch by grumbling about it first.  Seemingly, nobody likes the new gas tanks.

Does anyone here like them?  Do they not make a good example of government regulation run amok?  Is there anyone here who wouldn't vote for a referendum allowing a return to gas tanks designed to dispense gas?

But how did it happen?  What motives might people have had to push these (expletive deleted) contraptions?

• We could go with Warren's text above that I highlighted.  There are progressives out there who think they know how everyone should live, and who will use the government to force it.
  
• Then there is corporate interest.  Presumably, the old gas cans resulted in spills, which resulted in fires, which resulted in people either dead or horribly burned, which resulted in insurance companies having to make pay outs to policy holders.  Insurance companies are often behind safety rules, in part to save cost, and perhaps to make life safer.
  
• I also expect that government bureaucrats in agencies that create regulations tend to believe in regulations.  There is a common red meme -- not without basis -- that everything the government does gets messed up.  The people attracted to a life of crating regulations are not apt to share that meme.  Give a regulatory bureaucrat a shot at saving lives and money and he is apt to leap on it.
  
• Progressives politicians in general aren't against saving lives, in preventing pain and suffering.  They could be convinced to improve safety without too much effort.
  
• Politicians of every ilk would be tempted to accept campaign donations from the insurance companies, and then to pay extra attention when insurance companies advise on regulations.  The Republicans have more of a reputation for this sort of thing, but the Democrats are very much into it as well.
  

Most of the above, excepting Warren's stereotype of Progressives, are understandable and plausibly benign.  Well, politicians yielding to money interests is a problem.  A lot will not call that benign.  There is a mostly progressive push for campaign finance reform and a repeal of Citizens United.  I can agree with this as much as I can agree that many regulations are undesirable.

In short, while I do not at all like the (expletive deleted) new fangled (expletive deleted) gas tanks, there are plausible motives for how they came to be forced on the public that do not assume malice on the part of anybody.  I see no point in focusing on malice that likely doesn't exist.  I dislike excessive regulation quite a bit myself.  However, I'd as soon focus on the real motivations than wallow in a vile stereotype.

Is there an anti-regulation lobby organization watching the insurance industry, keeping track of the new regulations they are trying to push, and attempting to block the more absurd efforts?  Should we push more to kill Citizen's United?  Should we be writing our legislators and questioning them during campaign swings about stupid regulations that they voted for?  Are we doing all we can to fight the more excessive efforts of the nanny state regulators?

There are, in short, more constructive things to do than obsess on how people are out to get you when in fact they aren't.  Obsessing on a strawman, being unable to consider that the guys on the other side are honestly trying to be helpful, is part of the stagnation and dysfunction of our eternal 3T deadlock.  I'd like to be able to say, I believe this needs to be improved, how can we avoid unwanted side effects, and have a reasonable back and forth conversation about how to do things cleanly.  I don't generally get this.  Instead, I get folk telling me that I am motivated by malace and hate.  "All progressives are alike, you are progressive, and therefore you think that..."

And it isn't a problem exclusively with one faction or the other.  No faction has a monopoly on attributing vile motives, evil, insanity, prejudice or other forms of malignant motive on the other.