Let me relate an illustrative little story from the beginning of my brief tenure with the MA Dept. of Public Utilities (which has since become the Dept. of Telecommunications and Energy). When I first started, I held down the fort while the rest of the staff ran a little conference for utility companies. The purpose of this conference was to get representative of all the utility companies into one place, so it could be explained to all of them en masse that they really only were allowed to bill someone with whom they had a contractual relationship.
(Think about that for a moment.)
That is to say, if you had a customer who failed to pay his bill, you were not entitled to track down his elderly mother and tell her that if she didn't pay her son's electric bill, they'd ruin her credit report. (Force and fraud!) Nor can you shake down roommates, landlords, ex-spouses, and random other people. You could only try to extract the money from the person you sold the service to.
The reason the conference had to be held was that the problem of utility companies trying to shake down other people than those with whom they had a contractual agreement was endemic. So it had to be explained to them by the government, no, really, you only get to dun your customers, and if you don't stop behaving otherwise, we're going to punish you severely.
Now, I'd think what with big-L-Libertarians' reverence for the contract, that they'd think this was great. I don't know; maybe they do think this is how government should behave. Somehow, I don't get that impression.
So when I hear a big-L-Libertarian complain about regulation without specifying which regulations, I figure they quite literally have no idea what regulations are for or do, and that they are wholly unconcerned with the whole "force and fraud" principle -- they're just using it as a ratiocination for lowering their own taxes.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
branchandroot
Part 2
Date: 2004-07-26 05:03 pm (UTC)Let me relate an illustrative little story from the beginning of my brief tenure with the MA Dept. of Public Utilities (which has since become the Dept. of Telecommunications and Energy). When I first started, I held down the fort while the rest of the staff ran a little conference for utility companies. The purpose of this conference was to get representative of all the utility companies into one place, so it could be explained to all of them en masse that they really only were allowed to bill someone with whom they had a contractual relationship.
(Think about that for a moment.)
That is to say, if you had a customer who failed to pay his bill, you were not entitled to track down his elderly mother and tell her that if she didn't pay her son's electric bill, they'd ruin her credit report. (Force and fraud!) Nor can you shake down roommates, landlords, ex-spouses, and random other people. You could only try to extract the money from the person you sold the service to.
The reason the conference had to be held was that the problem of utility companies trying to shake down other people than those with whom they had a contractual agreement was endemic. So it had to be explained to them by the government, no, really, you only get to dun your customers, and if you don't stop behaving otherwise, we're going to punish you severely.
Now, I'd think what with big-L-Libertarians' reverence for the contract, that they'd think this was great. I don't know; maybe they do think this is how government should behave. Somehow, I don't get that impression.
So when I hear a big-L-Libertarian complain about regulation without specifying which regulations, I figure they quite literally have no idea what regulations are for or do, and that they are wholly unconcerned with the whole "force and fraud" principle -- they're just using it as a ratiocination for lowering their own taxes.
Did I answer the question?