Saturday, January 28, 2017

George Lakoff — The Public’s Viewpoint: Regulations are Protections

The term “regulation” is framed from the viewpoint of corporations and other businesses. From their viewpoint, “regulations” are limitations on their freedom to do whatever they want no matter who it harms. But from the public’s viewpoint, a regulation is a protection against harm done by unscrupulous corporations seeking to maximize profit at the cost of harm to the public....
It's all in the framing. Don't let them frame you.

George Lakoff
The Public’s Viewpoint: Regulations are Protections
George Lakoff | Director of the Center for the Neural Mind & Society and retired Distinguished Professor of Cognitive Science and Linguistics at the University of California at Berkeley

9 comments:

Matt Franko said...

But from the other thread, if nation A has a bunch of regulations that another nation B doesnt have then that provides nation B a Comparative Advantage if 1.under the metals or 2. if nation B will readily accrue nation A's numismatic units in payment which creates an external leakage for nation A which is not good for nation A .... and especially if nation A is ruled by morons...

Tom Hickey said...

Matt, this is why the whole economic analysis of trade is just BS. The analysis assumes a type of liberalism that doesn't exist owing to various asymmetries that generally reduce to asymmetrical power and its employment by those who control the levers.

Moreover, comparative advantage is often misrepresented as absolute advantage. See Investopedia. The reality is that the model of free trade under comparative advantage keeps nations that are low level producers stuck at that level.

Under the empire, Britain actually used its political power to enforce this by preventing the colonies to engage in manufacturing rather than resource extraction.

This was the model that transferred to the global economy under neoliberal globalization.

Most recently, the US attempted to turn Russia into a gas station until Putin figured out what was going on and ended it. Now he is in the US sights for doing so.

Free trade is a canard employed to distract from what the hidden agenda is.

I believe it was Andy Grove that first warned about the US exporting its high tech to take advantage of cheap foreign labor to the detriment of the US position. At least he was an early loud voice.

Matt Franko said...

Tom there is no hidden agenda they are too stupid to figure any of what we are talking about out... its a complex systemic arrangement that they do not possess the cognitive ability to deal with... they never had the training...

They have a libertarian bias that leads to all of this chaos... "free!" this and "free!" that... just put the word "free!" in front of anything and they are all for it...

They are going all around saying we have "free trade!" meanwhile there is a global cartel operating 24/7/365 to set the oil price... this is a simple cognitive bias textbook 101....

I blame Darwin but that is just me... I suppose Darwinism could just be another symptom of what is really operating....

Dan Lynch said...

"Protection" brings to mind "nanny state." I don't care for that framing.

Regulations are necessary in the industrialized world. Which side of the road to drive on, how strong roof structures should be to support snow loads, etc.. However, there is a trade-off between the cost of regulations and the benefit of regulations. I.e., perhaps we would be safer if the speed limit was 15 mph, but the cost of travel would be higher. The laws against recreational drugs are intended to make us safer (supposedly, but actually intended to disenfranchise blacks), but people must be getting a benefit from recreational drugs or else they wouldn't use them.

So regulation is a balancing act. We all can think of particular regulations that we don't care for, but on the whole there are valid reasons for our regulations. Trump's war on regulations is standard conservative/libertarian fantasy.

There is some irony in the anti-regulation prez issuing more regulations on immigration. Conservatives like regulations just fine when it suits their convenience.

GLH said...

I predict that the press will never say that regulations are public protections because that would go against what the owners of the press want. Bill Black says that the best way to rob a bank is to own one, well the best way to control the news is to own the "news" corporations.

Noah Way said...

@Tom, quoting McCain does not make an argument. Care to elaborate on the 'gas station'?

Regulations are made especially for corporations to guarantee markets, virtual monopolies, profitability, the perpetuation of a fascist state, etc. The ACA isn't a protection, it's a court tested model for privitaztion of Medicare and Social Security.

Aside from the fact that insurance is not care.

Dan Lynch said...

Another problem with "protections" is that it's not consistent with Lakoff's "nurturing parent" framing of liberalism. Instead, "protection" is something an authoritarian conservative parent would do.

The language of framing has its place, but it has its limitations.

Tom Hickey said...

Regulation is about many things, public protection is only one of them. Public safety is another that is closely related. These are positive.

There are also negative ones, like barriers to entry and other artificially created impediments to commerce on a level playing field.

The framing is often complex and misrepresented. Each has to be considered on its own merits given the context it addresses.

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