Regulation and the Old Adam
It seems the kids at UC-Berkeley learned why we need regulation. Their class was doing a computer simulated “electricity market” (like some proposed carbon trading markets). In no time some cornered the market in credits, destroyed half of the credits and jacked the prices sky high for the others. To stay in the game, you pay.
Christianity says there has to be a check on human beings. Not because we are so smart or powerful, but because we are so evil. That’s the sinful human nature at work, the Old Adam.
Our founding fathers thought the Old Adam was alive and well in the heart of each of them. So they devised a government of checks and balances. Everybody had somebody looking over their shoulder, ready to stop them. Pretty good system–has lasted well over 200 years.
How could anyone think the capitalist business model needs no (or little) regulation? Are the oil speculators doing anything more than the UC whiz kids were doing, only this time with real money? Will slaughterhouses and tomato growers (especially foreign ones) consistently listen to their sweeter angel and forego some profit to ensure what we eat is safe?
If it is simply (as our secular humanist friends would have it) a matter of education, then those at the top, say, Tannin and Cioffi, brokers at Bears Stearn, should be the most law-abiding mortgage traders in the world.
From the ICE oil futures market in London to the irritable second-grader whose mother asks to see his homework after he has told her he is done, the Bible says we need governmental regulation, fair, thorough and effective. That, too, is part of God’s plan, to have a servant for the punishment of the evil-doer.
–Don Pieper
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Agreed! “Through the eye of sinful man thy glory may not see.” In America, our rules and regulations started with the Ten Commandments evolving into our Judeo-Christian society influencing our Constitution and our Bill of Rights. Checks and balances were built in as Pastor Pieper so correctly states.
The problem comes when over zealous, uninformed elected officials start promulgating regulations in areas they know nothing about, like blaming speculators for the current oil crisis when they MIGHT be only a very small part of the bigger problem of supply and demand throughout the world.
Yes, controls and regulations are a must, but the trick is the “fair, thorough, and effective.” Fair for whom? Effective on who? How about the 17,000 plus pages of the Internal Revenue Code? Are they “fair?” How about Boobus Americanus who did not read their nothing down, no documentation loan agreements and now look to government to bale them out? Is it “fair” that the American taxpayer be burdened with this? Are we the evil doers?
No one is saying that we don’t need rules and regulations beyond those set forth in the Bible to control the sinful nature of man, but let’s make sure that we target our regulations carefully and with facts, not emotions. You can listen to the nightly news and target all of their scape goats, or you can research the facts. It does seem that our politicians don’t listen to anyone…..I think the regulators are in dire need of regulating.
Just a couple of more comments specifically on oil speculation. Let’s be clear. Speculators are NOT the problem. Speculators did not cause the collapse in Mexican and North Sea oil production. Speculators are not the driving force behind rising demand for oil in the emerging economies — which include the Middle East. Speculators did not cause the peak in Russian production either. And they are certainly not the reason the current Saudi production of 970,000 barrels a day is not an all-time high. Speculators may cause higher volatility in the oil market, but it is the oil producers that ultimately determine the long-term price trend.
If you need proof of this, look at those commodities which are not traded on the futures exchange, and are not influenced by speculation. These include coal and iron ore, to name just two. Both of them have risen at a higher rate than oil since the end of 2002. Oil gets the attention because it is the most important commodity, but prices are up all across the board.
While it may comfort people to think that speculators are the problem, the real problem is a lack of surplus energy. That’s what the world needs to pay attention to and address.
While government and Wall Street continue to keep their heads buried in the sand, we are destined to experience very high levels of inflation. We hope that will be the world’s wake-up call, and that the world will face the music in time to solve the energy problem. If we treat high oil prices as a temporary anomaly and do nothing, our future will be bleak.
They put regulators on all kinds of things, so that things do not blow up. It only makes sense. I am all for basic, sane, rational and responsible regulation.