Quotes About Regulation

Wall Street is a casino in which high-stakes wagers are placed within a limited number of betting houses that keep a percentage of the wins for themselves and fob off losses on others, including taxpayers.

The idea of a "free market" separate and distinct from government has functioned as a useful cover for those who do not want the market mechanism fully exposed. They

The French government classifies books as an "essential good," along with electricity, bread, and water.

In 2013, Apple spent $3,370,000 on lobbying; Amazon, $3,456,000; Facebook, $6,430,000; Microsoft, $10,490,000; and Google, $15,800,000, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

The Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 and its companion, the Clayton Act of 1914, were designed not only to improve economic efficiency by reducing the market power of economic giants like the railroads and oil companies but also to prevent companies from becoming so large that their political power would undermine democracy. Trustbusters during the first decades of the twentieth century tamed American industry and arguably saved capitalism from its own excesses.

The idea of a "free market" separate and distinct from government has functioned as a useful cover for those who do not want the market mechanism fully exposed. They have had the most influence over it and would rather keep it that way. The mythology is useful precisely because it hides their power.

Government doesn't "intrude" on the "free market." It creates the market. The rules are neither neutral nor universal, and they are not permanent. Different societies at different times have adopted different versions. The rules partly mirror a society's evolving norms and values but also reflect who in society has the most power to make or influence them.

There can be no "free market" without government. The "free market" does not exist in the wilds beyond the reach of civilization. Competition in the wild is a contest for survival in which the largest and strongest typically win. Civilization, by contrast, is defined by rules; rules create markets, and governments generate the rules.

A society deadened by a smothering network of laws while finding release in moral chaos is not likely to be either happy or stable.

Wall Street criminality is growing by leaps. There are no bounds.

U.S. Internal Revenue Service: an agency modeled after the revenue raising concepts of the 19th century economist, Jesse James.

Structured programming is discipline imposed upon direct transfer of control.

Structured programming imposes discipline on direct transfer of control.

Functional programming imposes discipline upon assignment.

The party-state structure still showed considerable looseness in organization and mode of functioning.

Price fixing is a bit like jumping off a tall building shouting, "I abolish the law of gravity." You cannot simply decree that something is worth more than anyone will pay for it or less than sellers will accept for it.

Harshaw concluded that man, a social animal, could not avoid government, any more than an individual could escape bondage to his bowels

Law, lastly, stands between politics and morality.

the media run everything, yeah, but they shouldn't run the law, too.

Kohut noticed that grandiosity, rather than improving your sex life, either makes you impotent or makes you so promiscuous that you cannot sustain relationships and you put yourself in danger of getting AIDS and dying. In other words, grandiosity tends to destroy you if you don't face up it and learn how to regulate it.

When Venezuela was a freer economy, it was relatively prosperous. But as the government became more involved in regulating the economy, it became progressively less free, less efficient, and less productive. When Chavez came to power, this process was already well underway; he only doubled down on it and turned economic regression into economic disaster." -p. 22

Thus transcription factors regulate genes. What regulates transcription factors? The answer devastates the concept of genetic determinism: the environment.

Ask not what a gene does. Ask what it does in a particular environment and when expressed in a particular network of other genes

In other words, the more genomically complex the organism, the larger the percentage of the genome devoted to gene regulation by the environment.