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ruiheh · 发表于 2011-12-22 18:46:54

132 - Should government be held accountable for regulating businesses? The author asserts that responsibility to regulate and enforce should be placed on organization to maximize benefit to society.

erhaps, there are plenty merit in such belief and many people will side with the author. Yet, in my view, after much contemplation and careful analysis, I think the claim that people will benefit most from a self-regulated organization is fable considering our economic and social environments.

Most importantly, regulation should not be placed in the hands of business as a fundamental differences lies between the two entities in objectives. Because this fundamental difference in objective, businesses are inclined to use the power of regulation to advance their own courses. For most businesses, they are inclined to maximize their profits; for most governments, they are installed to protect the wealth of their nation and their people. In additionally, wealth generated by each is allocated differently. Companies distribute its wealth to enhance its infrastructure, create new and better products, and maximize its stockholders wallet. On the contrary, the income are distributes in a much larger scale. Specifically, when the benefits of all is threatened by a few business, then governments often use regulation as a mean to protect citizens. For instance, in the early part of the 19th century, U.S. government forced the break up of Standard Oil Co to prevent monopoly in the petroleum industry and in the later part of last century, U.S. government also forced AT&T to break up, just to point out a few. Imagine if the power is placed in the hand of AT&T and Standard Oil, they would definitely not to have done the same, naming that doing so would cause a drastic change in their expected profits and market influences. Therefore, it is our best interests to not have businesses regulate themselves as their incentive and objectives often runs against the people of the country; instead, we should place the power in government to continue allowing it to regulated.

Additionally, placing the power of regulation in the hand of government will allow them to make decisions on a much larger scale than having the same in businesses. Moreover, regulation often reaches beyond the boarder of its own nations as some decisions can cause universal impacts across the global. Some of those impacts are not even reversible and can cause permanent damages to the world society at large. For instance the oil spill in Russian. Being the largest the oil exporters, there are millions of drills in Russian and some are more than a hundred years old. Unlike U.S government, Russian government is not regulating and does not want to regulate, placing the regulation duty all in the hands of businesses. Despite that a few companies is self-motivated to continuously improve and maintain their facilities, many others are ignoring the consequences of not doing so. In return, subconsciously, government is allowing these dilapidated drills and tens of thousands miles of pipelines to leak underground, causing huge environmental and eco-system upsets. These pollutions doesn't just stop there, with underground water system stretching all the way the cost of western Europe and southern tips of India, the environmental mass caused by Russian government's failure to regulate is immeasurable. If Russian government had not place the responsibility in the hands of business, it might not have had to suffer the consequences and cause so much unease across the globe.

Admittedly, there are many merits in allowing businesses to regulate themselves. It is often supposed that the best way to regulate is to allow the market to regulate itself. Definitely doing so will allow the market to continuously find its own equilibrium, yet at what costs? The financial breakdown in the 1930s, the tech bubble in 2002, and the housing crash landing in 2008, just to name a few, were all left along by government. Therefore, eventually the greed of human overtook the need to maintain a balance in the market, regulations were talked but rarely placed and the end result is universal suffrages. After consider both advantage and disadvantage, it is clear that governmental regulations are needed and the power and responsibility to regulate should continuously be placed in the hands of government rather than the hands of businesses.

In sum, basing my conclusion on reasons above that government and businesses have fundamental differences in objectives and that government decision-making often can yield bigger scales of impact than placing the regulation duty solely on individual businesses. Accordingly, I hold the position to disagree with the author and think it is the best interests of the people to continuously having government regulate the businesses rather than having themselves do the same.

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