More on bad businessmen

garret responds to yesterday’s post here admits regulation does not bring perfect behavior. I agree that it’s better than nothing but also that people (and I mean people in general) are not willing to pay for the current level of regulation, much less more. The article to which garret linked that began this discussion points out that Ohio passed a law four years ago “requiring crematories to be licensed and inspected. Today, not a single license has been issued and no crematory has been inspected.” Here in the Bay Area we have a similar issue with stores that sell water: they are supposed to be licensed and inspected by the county but most of the businesses don’t even know they are required to have a license and the county doesn’t have enough staff to inspect the few such businesses that do bother to take a license. And I can only imagine the outcry if the county were to increase taxes to fund more inspectors. So, garret, let’s pass more useless laws, most of which are tailored to corporate desires anyway. You cite Enron and the S&Ls but these scandals came because the executives took advantage of the laws they conned Congress into enacting; why would you expect better results just from more of the same?