23 April 2009

Judge Posner: the free market needs more regulation

Judge Richard Posner of the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals has written a forthcoming book, A Failure of Capitalism (Harvard University Press, May 2009), in which he (contritely?) expresses that it is, in fact, important and necessary to regulate the free market:
If you're worried that lions are eating too many zebras, you don't say to the lions, "You're eating too many zebras." You have to build a fence around the lions. They're not going to build it.
But wait, there's more:
You can't expect [an] individual firm to be worrying about what his collapse will do to the rest of economy. That's why you need government regulation of banking. [. . .] Coal-burning utilities in the Midwest don't worry about acid rain because that's going to be in the east. That's why you need regulation.

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