Grace Ross: Some Government Regulations Everyone Agrees On

Tuesday, August 13, 2013

Grace Ross, GoLocalWorcester MINDSETTER™

As easy as it is to condemn government regulations, in many cases it is what protects us.

Our young Worcester couple, Alexis Correa and Isabel Vasquez, both 22 were killed recently in a head on collision on a divided highway. So disheartening. We all end up thinking: “What was with the driver going the wrong direction on a divided highway? Were they drunk, were they high, what was wrong with them?”

Then I got to thinking. My friendly and yet contrary colleague Todd Feinberg asked me onto his show. We always spar with him going on about government regulation this and government regulation that.

It occurred to me: no matter how much folks claim they are against government regulations I have never heard somebody complain about basic driving laws–like you’re not allowed to drive on the wrong side of the road especially on a major hwy; we all know that’s going to lead to death. Folks do not complain about stoplights that save people from crashing in intersections and any number of other things.

So why is it that government driving regulations as long as it’s logical and works so that we all drive safer don’t lead to people complaining about government regulations? Driving is an incredibly highly regulated arena.

Secondhand laws

I thought about smoking laws. Most people believe that if you want to smoke you go ahead and smoke, but if I want to, I get to say that I don’t want to smoke. Where did all the smoking laws come from? Because it turns out that if you’re smoking and you’re sitting next to me, I’m smoking too. Your behavior takes away my choice; I need to be allowed to tell you you’re not allowed to pollute my air. And once we had the medical proof of the harm of secondhand smoke, people got laws changed.

Similarly, you’re not allowed to drive on the road so that I get killed.

Trust me. Like everyone, I have my long laundry list of government regulations that could not be more dysfunctional that I’d be happy to get rid of.

Taking the ones that we believe are functional, my guess is that the difference between people that say sort of knee jerk that they oppose government regulation and those of us who don’t, it’s not about whether the government regulations are there or not. Our support for a regulation has to do with whether we experience the government regulation has to do with our safety and the safety of others or not. If it’s about making sure that we don’t have smash ups on the road where people are dying right and left all the time, all of us get that. If it has to do with all people getting to decide whether they smoke or not, that’ s a little dicer, but pretty much we end up coming down on the idea that people get to decide how much smoke they inhale or not. Similarly, we think that folks who pollute water so that people are dying of cancer, they should be regulated.

Freedom of some speech

When anti-gun-control folks get up and say I should be able to have my gun no matter what, they forget that there are no absolute rights in our country. Even freedom of speech–such a cherished sacred right–is limited. You cannot decide you want to stand in the middle of a crowded theater and yell 'fire' and lead to people getting killed. Nor are you allowed to threaten to kill somebody. In those situations, freedom of speech had run right up against life and safety and in those situations, government regulates our ability to use freedom of speech.

The issue is not whether we believe government regulations are good or bad in some theoretical sense. We actually all believe in government regulations where we can see the clear impact on life and safety of ourselves and people around us.

The real difference here is whether we see our actions as primarily individual actions that have no impact on other people or whether we see the interconnectedness between our actions and the actions of others. If we see ourselves as having potentially serious mutual impacts, we see government regulation as having the potential to be sensible and provide needed protections.

As we discuss policy issues–gun control or something else, can we begin to understand each other’s perspective in terms of what seems to threaten life and safety? Just because you personally may not have had your life or safety threatened by something doesn’t mean that thing may not have a very high percentage of threatening life and safety of others. Maybe we need to identify the particular circumstances and what is threatening and how.

It is of no use to us to simply say dogmatically government regulation is good or bad. Once government becomes again about the people getting to decide, maybe part of struggle is listening so we come to see our decisions as affecting everyone not just our own little circle...