19th March 2010, 5:44 AM
The idea of laissez faire economics was fine during the time of the Founding Fathers when commerce consisted mainly of small, locally-owned family businesses, but with the introduction of big business during the Industrial Revolution, it has become easier for greedy and corrupt corporations to take advantage of its workers, and even in some cases, its customers, violating basic human rights and paying the workers squat for doing all the work. Calvin Coolidge's attitude of indifference towards big business matters certainly is not the way to go (he's more to blame for the Great Depression than Herbert Hoover, really, though Hoover was still a failure of a president). Not to be an advocate of big government, but the purpose of government is to protect the rights of the people, and in this day and age, corrupt business practices are something the people need to be protected from. The government has intervened on business matters from time to time: setting a minimum wage, creating the 40-hour work day, etc.
Small businesses, for the most part, can get by without much regulation. There should be virtually no government intervention on, say, an eBay transaction or a yard sale. However, when a business grows to a certain size, government regulation should be heavier to ensure that employees and customers are treated fairly and are not cheated by greedy CEOs. The government shouldn't control businesses as in a Marxist society, but it should monitor the larger corporations closely. While government should stay out of people's personal lives, big business is not a personal matter; it's a matter in which government should fulfill its purpose of protecting the rights of the people. That is why laissez-faire economics is now obsolete.
Small businesses, for the most part, can get by without much regulation. There should be virtually no government intervention on, say, an eBay transaction or a yard sale. However, when a business grows to a certain size, government regulation should be heavier to ensure that employees and customers are treated fairly and are not cheated by greedy CEOs. The government shouldn't control businesses as in a Marxist society, but it should monitor the larger corporations closely. While government should stay out of people's personal lives, big business is not a personal matter; it's a matter in which government should fulfill its purpose of protecting the rights of the people. That is why laissez-faire economics is now obsolete.