Yes, there are homeowner's associations that resemble mini-governments, with their own unique sets of laws, mainly agreed upon to protect a certain character, or in the case of one friend's beachfront condo, being required to contribute $30,000 in order to build a retaining wall to protect one of his fellow member's home from erosion. That's fine, but sometimes a homeowner's property can be taken away from them without judicial process by an association. Without regulation, there *are* abuses. _I especially do not want these sort of arbitrary mini-governments to telling me how to spend my money or move out_
Under laissez-faire capitalism, a man can still be arrested, tried, and convicted for having leaked poison upstream, having defrauded his customers, having threatened his neighbor, and so on.
So, a *man* can be convicted for leaking poison - but not corporation? So, if it's unwritten but deliberate policy (for instance, reward that employee who finds a way of disposing chemical waste most cost-effectively, do not ask questions) to poison citizens, it will merely suffer the loss of that one employee? What's to discourage them when they do this time and time and time again, even with *weak* government regulation? If the fines are less than the cost of proper disposal, they will continue doing it.
It is an undeniable fact that without government regulation, corporations maximize profits by externalizing costs, and in most cases, the profits to them are a mere microscopic fraction to the costs to individuals such as you or I (dead-man switch vs. 10s of billions cleanup effort, proper disposal of waste vs. dozens of miscarriages & cancer deaths, ventilation systems & treatment of miner's lung, pollution vs. global warming, etc). So, the argument that government regulation ends up driving costs up for business is only true if you believe they are perpetual money-making machines, but they aren't. Everything they do has an externalizing factor to some extent, and without regulation, they will maximize their profit by 1% even if it kills someone.
Yes, there are homeowner's associations that resemble mini-governments, with their own unique sets of laws, mainly agreed upon to protect a certain character, or in the case of one friend's beachfront condo, being required to contribute $30,000 in order to build a retaining wall to protect one of his fellow member's home from erosion. That's fine, but sometimes a homeowner's property can be taken away from them without judicial process by an association. Without regulation, there *are* abuses. _I especially do not want these sort of arbitrary mini-governments to telling me how to spend my money or move out_
So, a *man* can be convicted for leaking poison - but not corporation? So, if it's unwritten but deliberate policy (for instance, reward that employee who finds a way of disposing chemical waste most cost-effectively, do not ask questions) to poison citizens, it will merely suffer the loss of that one employee? What's to discourage them when they do this time and time and time again, even with *weak* government regulation? If the fines are less than the cost of proper disposal, they will continue doing it.
It is an undeniable fact that without government regulation, corporations maximize profits by externalizing costs, and in most cases, the profits to them are a mere microscopic fraction to the costs to individuals such as you or I (dead-man switch vs. 10s of billions cleanup effort, proper disposal of waste vs. dozens of miscarriages & cancer deaths, ventilation systems & treatment of miner's lung, pollution vs. global warming, etc). So, the argument that government regulation ends up driving costs up for business is only true if you believe they are perpetual money-making machines, but they aren't. Everything they do has an externalizing factor to some extent, and without regulation, they will maximize their profit by 1% even if it kills someone.