o you favor government regulation? Government “oversight?” All that “red tape?” Well, of course you do! Aren’t you glad there’s someone up in the control tower making sure your plane doesn’t crash into another one? Or, think about traffic lights—good or bad? What about the scientists who make sure your medicine and food won’t kill you? See—you do like regulation!

Well, sure--that’s the easy stuff. Everyone supports those things. But not over-regulation, right? Not all those stupid forms and requirements and ideas. Yuck! And yes, there are many points where these things get out of hand…when the government has gone too far.

But how, exactly, do we decide where “too far” is?

ere’s a way to look at it. All the examples I mentioned above are safeguards against things that that could harm or kill you or your family. Few people (aside from nutjobs like RFK, Jr.) are going to criticize that kind of protection.

But the government is involved in countless other areas where there is serious argument about whether protections should exist at all. This frequently generates disputes…and burns hotter when people apply “belief filters” to their points of view. So let’s think abou those filters. I’ll cite four of them:

Income
Self-interest
Opinions
Values

When these are applied there are very few regulations that can please everyone. Here are examples of these filters at work:

Too often income and self-interests are the same thing—and when these enter the debate, the wealthiest individuals and corporations almost always win. They can buy the most influence. At times, the government even cedes regulation decisions directly to big corporations (e.g., Boeing and the FAA.)
Opinions can rip apart society, as we saw with regulation during the pandemic. Masks? Shutdowns? Vaccines?
But the most vexing situations come when “values” arguments are thrown out—particularly when values fight against each other. Currently, my favorite example concerns the site of a former World War II Japanese American internment camp in Idaho. The Minidoka National Historical Monument covers over 200 acres of land in the high desert. It is inarguably desolate. In WWII it became “home” to 13,000 Japanese Americans.

The federal government owns adjacent land and announced plans to construct 400 windmills to generate alternative energy. But Japanese American groups are protesting strongly; they claim the existence of those windmills would rob visitors of experiencing the inherent loneliness of the landscape; heritage would be defiled. The government entered negotiations and offered to reduce the number of windmills…and to move them as far as nine miles away. The heritage groups say, “not good enough”.

So here are clashing values—both on the “liberal” side of the political spectrum. What would you do? No matter what, someone is going to be unhappy.

Assailing the government over regulations is frequently misguided and often pointless. We need regulations, and some of them are not going to be enacted without offending the values and interests of some Americans. Which means some regulations are going to rub you the wrong way. But at the same time, some of them may benefit you and annoy others. It’s the nature of the game.

ut beyond these filters, the bigger issue here is separating government responsibility from bad actors who necessitate regulation in the first place. When bad people do bad things, too often the government is blamed for not preventing those bad acts to begin with. This is ass backwards.

In 1969, President Richard Nixon (of all people) introduced an Environmental Protection Agency to stop businesses from dumping toxic stuff into the air and the water. Substantial fines have been levied over the years, and some people have actually gone to jail. But that hasn’t stopped the problem—pollution continues. So, who’s most to blame? The government that can’t stop it…or the polluters who knowingly break the law?
Not too long ago, crypto currencies were introduced specifically to avoid both government regulation and the entire existing financial system. As we wrote more than a year ago, the lack of any legitimizing authority proved lethal in crypto’s slow march toward oblivion. And in the ultimate (and predictable) irony, many of those who lost crypto fortunes trying to avoid government are now screaming that this same government should have done more to protect them—from themselves.

But the benchmark case study in the relationship between society and regulation is the one now unfolding around artificial intelligence. AI can write your essay, flawlessly imitate your voice and face, and take your job. The impact of AI will largely define the next generation.

Tristan Harris, the former “design ethicist” at Google, says the dangers of AI were previewed with the introduction of social media. He believes Facebook and all its rivals set off a “race to the bottom of the brain stem for attention.” And that race, he claims, social media fueled, “…addiction, polarization, narcissism, validation-seeking, loneliness, sexualization of children, online harassment and bullying.” That’s quite a legacy.

We can’t undo that; but could we act to channel AI before it’s too late? Even key AI developers are calling for this. But Harris says the prevailing mania is for companies to “win”—developers fear winding up in second place. As a result, AI, “…can undermine the container of society working at all.” On top of that, it’s being deployed far faster than any other technology advance in history.

Predictably, governments are now being called on to protect against all this. But for that to happen, congressional staffers and government scientists would have to crystal ball exactly what all of those private developers are inventing. This kind of perfect ‘pre-cognition” is impossible.

To Sarah Myers, head of an AI policy group, this is more than a little too convenient for AI developers. She says, “It’s such an irony seeing a posture about the concern of harms by people who are rapidly releasing into commercial use the system responsible for those very harms.”

onald Reagan proclaimed, “government is not the solution to our problems; government is the problem.”

That was a declaration of war against government regulation from the man who headed the government…a government ostensibly designed to be “of the people.”

And as stated earlier, overreach is a problem. Florida recently passed a bill requiring a driver’s license before driving a golf cart. California has mandated “gender neutral” sections in all toy stores. And when you move down the ladder to local school boards—well, don’t even look.

However, the fact is that although we condemn it, government regulation—especially on the federal level—benefits every American every day.

If you’re not convinced…maybe America is not the right country for you?

Issue 23

Deregulation