Editor's Page
Government regulation: another view Joan Claybrook is administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, a part of the Department of Transportation. She recently spoke in Washington, D.C., before the Consumer Federation of America. Here are excerpts from her prepared text. If a visitor from outer space were to say: Take me to that segment of U.S. society that most persistently demands government interference in the marketplace, she would have a hard time deciding between citizen advocates and the business roundtable. Whereas our visitor would expect consumers, environmentalists, and worker representatives to press for social welfare programs, medical care benefits, health, environmental, and safety regulation, she might not realize that U.S. business, for all its protestations about government interference, is one of the largest users of the government's largesse. If our visitor takes a look at how the government's budget and authority are allocated, she will find billions upon billions of dollars worth of annual subsidies, loan guarantees, protection from competition, inflated contracts, tax preferences, and other special interest benefits. These kinds of "big government" goodies are not subject to corporate indictments and editorial advertisements, because Uncle Sam is fine when he is Uncle Sugar. Rare is the company that wants to get Uncle Sugar off its back. Indeed, it is compellingly clear that to many corporations, government is fine when it is the subsidizer of last resort, the lender of last resort, the guarantor of last resort, the insurer of last resort, and the cartel-defender of last resort. But when Uncle Sugar becomes Uncle Sam, the people-protector of last resort, the corporate tiger bares his teeth and snarls. But what of the health and safety protections offered by government regulation? Are they any more legitimate than the corporate subsidies and protections? In regulating for health and safety, government assumes one of its most basic functions. The conceptual basis for social regulatory agencies is quite different from government activity intended to limit or replace the free market. In any society, one of the basic tasks of government and the legal system is to decide which acts are so harmful to others that they cannot be freely permitted. And in our society, where the sanctity of life has the highest value, the government has consistently required basic minimum standards of decency, whether by individuals or corporations. Unfortunately, too many companies or industries have refused to recognize both the multiple hazards of their technology and the legitimate interest our government has in the public's health and safety. This intransigence persists. In economic terms, health and safety laws that require investment in preventing these harms are not considered "productive." Let me suggest that our economic ostriches tell the victims that health and safety regulation is not productive. Or tell the companies who produce and sell the pollution-control equipment that it is not productive. Tell future generations of people and business that it is not productive to preserve and prolong the natural resources and the natural health of our society. In my present area of specialty, the benefits of regulation abound. The demands of the auto regulatory program have awakened a sleeping giant in Detroit, and are causing revolutionary change in an industry which has not seen any new inventions since the automatic transmission 30 years ago. The improvements are not only anti-inflationary, but they are fostering for the first time the ability of the industry to export its vehicles abroad. It is also important to recognize that the absence of government regulation does not necessarily mean an absence of any regulation. For too often, the absence of government regulation means de facto business regulation—of other business and of consumers, in pricing, in product limitations, in voluntary industry standards. The logical response to this privately sponsored business regulation of society is minimum government regulation to protect human health and safety, and law enforcement by the Federal Trade Commission and the antitrust division to foster competition in the marketplace. That is what the Carter Administration stands for and what consumers have said again and again that they want. D
Views expressed on this page are those of the author only and not necessarily those of ACS
Feb. 19, 1979C&EN
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