Driving and Capitalism - Regulations Improve Personal Freedom

There are some who believe that regulation is the opposite of freedom, but the reality is that limited regulation is what improves your personal freedom.

Driving is the ultimate symbol of freedom in America. You are free to drive anywhere you want, at any time you want. You can leave whenever without asking anyone for permission. You can drive down the street, across town, or across the whole country, by yourself or with whomever you choose. You can take the freeways, side streets or country roads. You can go for fun, or business, or you can get paid to drive. You can drive a small car or a big car or a motorcycle or an 18 wheeler. You can drive an electric car, a gas car or a hybrid. You can drive a vehicle you own, or one you borrow, or one you rented. You can pay someone else to drive you.

And yet your ability to drive all of these places, when everyone else is driving too, is because we have some basic rules. Drive on the right, stop at the light, use your blinker to turn, stay in your lane, and don’t speed.

Those sound dumb but in 1915 they didn’t have any of those rules at all. People literally could drive however they wanted to, on the left or the right, and no one had turn signals. They didn’t have lanes or lights, signs. It was insanely dangerous and maddeningly slow.

So they created all these rules and regulations that dictated how you could drive, they hired police to enforce these rule, and later regulations saying you had to take a test to make sure you know the rules and now you even have to get two licenses to drive, one for yourself and another for your car.

But really, honestly, does anyone feel that burdened by these regulations. They don’t curtain your freedom. You are still completely free to drive wherever and whenever you want, and you can even pick your route. It’s just now, you can do reasonably quickly and safely

Driving in 1920’s was literally 20 times more dangerous per mile driven than it is today. That wasn’t all traffic rules though. We take seat belts for granted today, but they were not were not common until the late 1960s. Even though they were invented in the 1880s and were used more widely in airplanes, in automobile they were only sold as optional upgrades for extra money. Even when Ford launched an aggressive marketing campaign for seat belts in 1956, 85% of car buyers chose NOT to pay the extra money for them.

Car companies were not prioritizing them and neither were car buyers. The free market was not solving this problem on its own. But In 1968 that a new federal regulation required that all new cars have seat belts installed in them. Was that regulation violating our freedom? What about regulations for crash test survivability ratings? If driving today were as dangerous as it was then, 125,000 more people would die every year from auto accidents than they do. That is more than 340 people not dying every single day.

Some critics oppose “regulations” because they say they hurt profits and raise prices paid by consumers. Yes, absolutely, they did raise the price of cars. Seat belts, turn signals, safety glass and crash survivability surely make cars cost more than if they didn’t have these things.

But warnings that people won’t be able to afford cars are obviously wrong. The overwhelming majority of Americans can afford cars of some vintage, grade, and quality. Yes, there are some very very poor people who cannot afford cars, but the overwhelming majority off poor Americans can afford cars. (Parking in downtown cities is another matter ;-)

So, people are free and able to drive to the store, to vacation, to work, or across the country and get home quickly and safely because of regulations.

Driving is an analogy for the economy. Rules allow cars, and goods and services, to move around safely and efficiently.

Our economy is much the same way. Regulations actually help markets work. Mitt Romney, a Wall street billionaire republican Governor, Senator, and one time GOP presidential nominee said. “Regulation is essential. You can’t have a free market work without regulation.”

“Regulation is essential. You can’t have a free market work without regulation.” Mitt Romney - GOP Governor, Senator, and one time Presidential Nominee

More people are willing and able to go to any restaurant or grocery they want because they can expect not to get sick the overwhelming majority of the time because we have food manufacturing and food handling safety law and inspectors who enforce those rules. You are free to work where ever you want, but there are regulations saying employers have to give you a break, they have to have toilets, and they cannot refuse to pay you. There are 13,000 chemical plants across the country, but there are regulations that require them to store toxic chemicals safely and prevent them from piping toxic waste into rivers or underground “tanks”.

Sure, rules can go too far. I have a family member who is having to spend good money on pretty silly things because of building and zoning codes in his town. I wasn’t allowed to have vendors take me to baseball games when I worked for a bank because they had a $10 limit by law before it was called a bribe.

But regulations are what we want when we yell “they shouldn’t be able to do that” when we see all kinds of toxic pollution pouring straight into a river. Having regulations against dumping industrial waste water straight into the rivers our drinking water comes from is a good thing. Have restaurant safety inspectors is a good thing.

Referring to the [The housing bubble and economic crash of 2008], Obama once asked “Does anybody out there think that the big problem we had is that there was too much oversight and regulation of Wall Street?”

There are some in America who want us to see all regulation and threats to freedom. They want to build and run their factory without any rules so they want you to equate “deregulation” with freedom. But as we’ve seen, driving wouldn’t be the perfect symbol of economic freedom in America without some good regulations that make it possible to do quickly, easily, and safely. As many Republicans have said, you have to have rules and regulations to have a free market and a growing economy.