http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2007/apr/18/7 Another example of what happens if you did not have government regulation, price fixing over one of our most sacred beverages, the beer. Slightly in jest, but I think my point that government regulation is there to ensure competitiveness and product choice for the consumer stands.
Weslinder's technical point is moot and trivial in the face of capitalism's tendency towards reduced competition sans any outside influence. Seriously, if weslinder's argument is that regulation is a greater barrier to competition than unrestrained "market forces", he's off his rocker.
Which is why instead of half stepping regulations there should have been more regulations at the outset to prevent such things.
I think the documentary title was meant to be tongue-in-cheek. But Enron is certainly about the hubris of money and power in the absence of real intelligence. In the end the powerful defended themselves as ignorant. Real intelligence is very conservative, because it knows that it doesn't really know.
Don't call them Shirley. While I don't doubt some are merely posting "as ideologues," a couple of the most vocal are posting more out of abject naivety. There may be some intelligence there, leavened with ignorance. And to think that all these years I believed it damned near impossible to get a public school education in America without reading Upton Sinclair's The Jungle. Seriously, has anyone here who made it through high school in this country not read The Jungle? One other point re "the sunglasses." It is very common for a large corporation to have numerous brands "competing" with each other while selling the same product, with advertizing aimed at different segments of society. The buyer often has no clue that this is the case. They might get ticked off at shoddy quality and march down to the mall to buy glasses from "another brand," not realizing that they are merely labeled differently, with cosmetic changes in packaging, etc..
Actually when I went to high school in the late '80's, Lamar for the win!, The Jungle wasn't required reading. I read it while in high school because the history book text book referred to it and I found a copy at a used bookstore.
