Quotes & Sayings About Market Regulation

The nature of the economic system should be a matter for public choice, and free market capitalism should not be accepted without any discussion of the rich variety of alternatives ... Unlike civil laws, economic laws are imposed on people with all the authority of immutable laws of nature. But the economy is created by people, supported by government intervention, regulation, statute and subsidy, and implemented in such a way that it gives substantial wealth and power to a privileged few, while the majority face a life of relentless work, stress and periodic financial insecurity. — Tony Benn

In the debate between those who believe in essentially unregulated markets and others who hold that reasonable regulation diminishes market excesses without inhibiting their basic function, the subprime situation unfortunately provides ammunition for the latter view. — Barney Frank

The larger Europe grows, the more diverse must be the forms of co-operation it requires. Instead of a centralised bureaucracy, the model should be a market - not only a market of individuals and companies, but also a market in which the players are governments.
Thus governments would compete with each other for foreign investments, top management and high earners through lower taxes and less regulation.
Such a market would impose a fiscal discipline on governments because they would not want to drive away expertise and business.
It would also help to establish which fiscal and regulatory policies produced the best overall economic results.
No wonder socialists don't like it. — Margaret Thatcher

It rests on the attempt since the 1970s to translate a pathological degeneration of the principle of laissez-faire into economic reality by the systematic retreat of states from any regulation or control of the activities of profit-making enterprise. This attempt to hand over human society to the (allegedly) self-controlling and wealth- or even welfare-maximising market, populated (allegedly) by actors in rational pursuit of their interests, had no precedent in any earlier phase of capitalist development in any developed economy, not even the USA. It was a reductio ad absurdum of what its ideologists read into Adam Smith, as the correspondingly extremist 100% state-planned command economy of the USSR was of what the Bolsheviks read into Marx. — Eric Hobsbawm

Corruption is government intrusion into market efficiencies in the form of regulations. — Milton Friedman

Climate change detonates the ideological scaffolding on which contemporary conservatism rests. A belief system that vilifies collective action and declares war on all corporate regulation and all things public simply cannot be reconciled with a problem that demands collective action on an unprecedented scale and a dramatic reining in of the market forces that are largely responsible for creating and deepening the crisis. — Naomi Klein

With the derivatives market larger than ever, we need way more regulation of Wall Street, not less. — Adam McKay

Any time people create a "black market" to avoid government regulation, they are engaged in, and promoting, free market economics. — Dave Champion

We need open, competitive, market economies ... but at the same time with effective regulation and supervision. — Jose Manuel Barroso

But our system of regulation must keep up with this. If it fails to keep up, it will hold back economic expansion. We need financial market regulation that works at national and European level. — John Bruton

Regulatory fiat cannot create a market at a technologically interdependent interface. And by the same token, regulation and so-called monopoly power rarely prevail at modular interfaces between stages of value-added technology. — Clayton Christensen

Here is a principle to use in all aspects of economics and policy. When you find a good or service that is in huge demand but the supply is so limited to the point that the price goes up and up, look for the regulation that is causing it. This applies regardless of the sector, whether transportation, gas, education, food, beer, or daycare. There is something in the way that is preventing the market from working as it should. If you look carefully enough, you will find the hand of the state making the mess in question. — Jeffrey Tucker

If the television market collapses - and it will collapse - then, it seems, there is too much regulation, and that's not a good thing. — Ofra Strauss

I believe in market economics. But to paraphrase Churchill - who said this about democracy and political regimes - a market economy might be the worst economic regime available, apart from the alternatives. I believe that people react to incentives, that incentives matter, and that prices reflect the way things should be allocated. But I also believe that market economies sometimes have market failures, and when these occur, there's a role for prudential - not excessive - regulation of the financial system. — Nouriel Roubini

Those who believe that liberal democracy and the free market can be defended by the force of law and regulation alone, without an internalised sense of duty and morality, are tragically mistaken. — Jonathan Sacks

The rationale for the vast network of government welfare programs as well as regulation and control over private enterprise is based on the socialist analysis of the market economy. — Richard Ebeling

Government mandates, incidentally, are likely to distort rather than solve the problem of finding a market. I would, therefore, force my organization to live by its wits rather than to rely on capricious subsidies or non-economic-based regulation to fuel my business. — Clayton Christensen

It was the task of industrial society to destroy all of that. All that "community" implies -- self-sufficiency, mutual aid, morality in the marketplace, stubborn tradition, regulation by custom, organic knowledge instead of mechanistic science -- had to be steadily and systematically disrupted and displaced. All of the practices that kept the individual from being a consumer had to be done away with so that the cogs and wheels of an unfettered machine called "the economy" could operate without interference, influenced merely by invisible hands and inevitable balances and all the rest of that benevolent free-market system guided by what Cobbett called, his lip curled toward Hume and James Steuart and Adam Smith, "Scotch Feelosophy. — Kirkpatrick Sale

We're always projecting our moral categories on things. I think that's inevitable. But capitalism places no particular value on morality. Morality in the market is enforced by contract and regulation and law, because morality is understood to be in conflict with the motive force of greed and accumulation. — Michael Pollan

Complex regulation in place of simple-rules capitalism disrupts market processes and corrupts business incentives. — Robert L. Bradley Jr.

Conservatives want smaller government. They want to focus on market-based solutions wherever one can. They want to have as little regulation as possible. But in general, they recognize that government must play an important role for a society to operate. — Norman Ornstein

they'll reregulate within ten years. There'll be a string of crashes, and they'll do it. the free marketeers will scream, but the fact is, free markets don't provide safety. Only regulation does that. You want safe food, you better have inspectors. You want safe water, you better have an EPA. You want a safe stock market, you better have an SEC. And you want safe airlines, you better regulate them too. Believe me, they will. — Michael Crichton

I've been regulated my whole life. We have progressive taxes. It's not a free-market free-for-all. I completely understand that society has a perfectly legitimate right to put in structures and regulations and rules that make it fairer, better, cleaner. — Jamie Dimon

The free market is not a system. It is not a policy dictated by anyone in particular. It is not something that Washington implements. It does not exist in any legislation, law, bill, regulation, or book. It is what you get when people act on their own, entirely without central direction, and with their own property, and within human associations of their own creation and in their own interest. It is the beauty that emerges in absence of control. — Jeffrey Tucker

I am a strong believer in the free market. I am a strong believer in capitalism. But, I am also a strong believer that there are certain common goods - our air, our water, making sure that people are safe - that require to have some regulation. — Barack Obama

America used to be a uniquely productive, low-cost place to do business. We had efficient infrastructure. We had limited regulation. We believed in the market. — Michael Porter

People feel that the EU is heading in a direction that they never signed up to. They resent the interference in our national life by what they see as unnecessary rules and regulation. And they wonder what the point of it all is. Put simply, many ask 'why can't we just have what we voted to join - a common market?' — David Cameron

"One of the best things about marijuana legalization: "I think the black market has been damaged. I think people are willing to pay taxes and to go through pretty rigorous regulation." — John Hickenlooper

The free enterprise concept inherent in the economic model of capitalism should mean common people, or lower and middle class wage-earners, have greater potential to rise up and gain financial independence. In reality, however, free enterprise all too often leads to an almost total lack of government regulation that in turn allows the global elite to run amuck in Gordon Gecko-style financial coups. — James Morcan

The balance between consumption and production makes price. The market settles, and alone can settle, that price. Market is the meeting and conference of the consumer and producer, when they mutually discover each other's wants. Nobody, I believe, has observed with any reflection what market is, without being astonished at the truth, the correctness, the celerity, the general equity, with which the balance of wants is settled. They who wish the destruction of that balance, and would fain by arbitrary regulation decree, that defective production should not be compensated by encreased price, directly lay their axe to the root of production itself. [Thoughts and Details on Scarcity] — Edmund Burke

With the growth of market individualism comes a corollary desire to look for collective, democratic responses when major dislocations of financial collapse, unemployment, heightened inequality, runaway inflation, and the like occur. The more such dislocations occur, the more powerful and internalized, Hayek insists, neoliberal ideology must become; it must become embedded in the media, in economic talking heads, in law and the jurisprudence of the courts, in government policy, and in the souls of participants. Neoliberal ideology must become a machine or engine that infuses economic life as well as a camera that provides a snapshot of it. That means, in turn, that the impersonal processes of regulation work best if courts, churches, schools, the media, music, localities, electoral politics, legislatures, monetary authorities, and corporate organizations internalize and publicize these norms. — William E. Connolly

[Government] regulation is an imperfect substitute for the accountability, and trust, built into a market in which food producers meet the gaze of eaters and vice versa. — Michael Pollan

Funny, I don't particularly care for either "laws" or "order". Liberty is messy. Freedom yields imperfect results. — A.E. Samaan

These days, nearly everyone claims to be democratic. I have even heard it claimed that the Chinese Communist Party is democratic. 'Capitalist', by contrast, is a word too often used as a term of abuse to be much heard in polite company. How do the institutions of the democratic state and those of the market economy relate to one another? Do corporations play an active part in politics, through lobbyists and campaign contributions? Do governments play an active part in economic life, through subsidies, tariffs and other market-distorting devices, or through regulation? What is the right balance to be struck — Niall Ferguson

The trouble with government regulation of the market is that it prohibits capitalistic acts between consenting adults. — Robert Nozick

Recognizing that the boundaries of the market are ambiguous and cannot be determined in an objective way lets us realize that economics is not a science like physics or chemistry, but a political exercise... If the boundaries of what you are studying cannot be scientifically determined, what you are doing is not a science. — Ha-Joon Chang

However, you have to recognize that regulations will never be completely successful and they will always be full of holes. You must constantly be ready to fill new holes. Actually regulation should be kept to a minimum, but there has to be some cooperation between market participants and authorities - as was the case in the early postwar years. The Bank of England was a very successful regulator by cooperating with market participants. This cooperative spirit was broken by the market fundamentalists. — George Soros

, I believe in some type of free market system. I just don't think you'll find an example of one completely free from government intervention. — Kenneth Eade

Every systemic market injustice arose from some loophole in a regulation created to correct some prior injustice. — Michael Lewis

Free culture depends upon vibrant competition. Yet the effect of the law today is to stifle just this kind of competition. The effect is to produce an over-regulated culture, just as the effect of too much control in the market is to produce an over-regulated-regulated market. — Lawrence Lessig