UK government about to start monitoring personal data on social network sites

[UnderseaLcpl]

Originally Posted by Skybird

As little regulation as possible, so that business can unfold and be creative, and can compete. As much regulation as needed to prevent monopolism and lacking competition, and protect the interests of the community from being thrown over by interests of the economy.

Well we are in agreement about this much, at least. I suspect that we disagree on how much regulation is needed, however.

The idea of unregulated markets is dead since the current crisis at the latest. No matter what attempts there are in argument to blame other factors, the primary problem has been a financial system that has been left to itself to regulate itself - everything else is just an excuse attempting to avoid putting this holy golden cow of "self-regulating markets" into question.

Are you certain that you considered that opinion objectively? First amongst the many arguments against regulation is that it often causes the problems to begin with. In terms of the current crisis, one cannot make the case that the U.S. financial markets were unregulated, or even minimally regulated. How many pages of pre-crisis financial regulations would you like me to find for you? 1000? 10,000? 100,000? The Library of Congress has an extensive database.
When confronted with that type of regulation, in addition to heavy taxes, and the army of expensive lawyers required to comply with those regulations, is it any wonder that so many institutions seized upon the opportunity to use government-created initiatives for profit? Even then, the regulations and regulators failed in their task, obviously.

The idea of the unregulated market cannot exsist, (if it ever really did) you are correct in that, imo. But very minimally regulated markets make billions of unregulated transactions every day without fail. They are regulated only by supply and demand. And when the market does fail, we have recession, but recession is a good thing. It adjusts the market quickly and effectively.

At this point, I have a hard time arguing anything further because I don't know what kind of regulations you would like to see, and who should execute them and how. It is one thing to say that business should accept responsibility for community affairs outside of what is inherent in market dynamics, it is quite another to say that agency A should pursue policy B overseen by C to achieve effect D.


I'm sure that both of us would agree that strong anti-fraud regulation is required, provided that it is not overly expensive to maintain or too pervasive. I would favor a system of very harsh penalties for clear cases of fraud. We can agree on that, yes?
I feel the best system would simply be to implement harsh penalties for fraud that is exposed and reported, rather than detailing (and trusting) the state to deal with cumbersome and costly preventative investigation.
That is the main form of regulation I would support. I would even go so far as to agree that some (limited) anti-trust regulation could be used, to foster competition.

Unlimited greed, total lack of sense of responsibility, and maximum, criminal egoism has been the result. It simply does not work that way. It only works that way at the cost of the community, when the many have to repair the damage, and compensate for it, that is done by the few in the name of their own egoism. Self regulating market - that would only work if man would be a reasonable, altruistic being by nature and essence. But in fact, man is unreasonable, driven by irrational emotion, and a born egoist. we are Homo Sapiens - no rational Vulcans.

The same could be said of the state, with a lot more empyrical proof. Even at the worst of times, most free-market states tend to suffer less.
And Vulcans would make terrible businessmen.
The key to the free-market is harnessing man's flaws through competition to provide the best result for everyone.

But all this and what you said has nothign to do with the basic principle of that statement: the more security, the less freedom - the more freedom, the less security. The more anti-terror-laws, the more limiting of basic rights. The more basic rights, the less prevention against terrorism.

You can't have both. you need to find a balance that you can live with. That means to not look at the individual event (or lack of), where the probabilities already have sprung to either 100 or to 0%, but to find a balance where the overall general probablities are such that you can accept the resulting ammount of limitations to your freedoms, and the remaining threats of terrorism.

That is the price of having an open society basing on the individual, instead of having a totalitarian one, where the state is all and the individual counts nothing.

Once again, you too easily discount the effectiveness of private interests in security roles. One must employ the selfish nature of man to create security without the sacrifice of freedom. An armed populace, and the freedom of private interests to manage their own security affairs will create a superior system that harms neither liberty nor safety and is regulated only by the direct choice of the people.

Unlike the state, private industry is directly accountable for any failures. Take the example of 9/11. Airlines suffered for years, through no fault of their own, because the state was entrusted with administering and regulating security protocols, and failed. However, the state ballooned after its' failure, to the tune of billions of dollars of taxpayer money, and remains not only ineffective but vexacious as well, in the form of the TSA and the Department of Homeland Security.

To give or fail to strictly limit power to the state will always yield similar results in due time and always has. I think we agree on some basic principles, but until you provide some superior system of keeping the state in check and avoiding the occasional harms of the market, I can't say whether or not I can agree with you.