Regulating our thinking about regulation
Pay attention you! We are watching...
Cass Sunstein demonstrates clearly that we should be paying
attention to the elite struggle over how to frame—how to think and talk about—the
relationship between government regulation and economic prosperity.
The
term “job-killing regulations” has been used so often that in some circles it
seems to have become a single word. Many Republicans believe that regulations
are job-killing by definition.
Sunstein reviews the competing perspectives and concludes
that “it isn’t possible to predict, in the abstract, whether regulations will
kill jobs or create jobs. That’s an empirical question.” With normative implications.
Then, going further, he suggests that even these two
competing positions might get it wrong, just as Cornell West does when he
reframes our conversations about race.
The
latest evidence, outlined in an important new book, Does Regulation Kill
Jobs? suggests that the polar positions are wrong.
With claims that Obamcare kills jobs likely to be a central
pivot point in the next two election cycles, this question is one we should
start thinking about to insulate ourselves from the prevailing, and
unproductive, ways elites frame this question for us. Sunstein provides a very useful introductory
primer, concluding that we need to take the question seriously.
A
lot more remains to be learned, but two things are clear. First, there isn’t
much direct evidence to date that regulation has caused significant job losses
in the U.S. Second, some regulations do cost jobs, and they create real and
sometimes long-term human hardship as a result. In deciding whether and how to
proceed, regulators should take account of that hardship — and try to minimize
it.
Eugene Robinson reminds us that like
political and economic structures interact with behaviors…culture is also a
structure and 12 Years a Slave winning the Academy Award for best picture is a
structural punctuation mark we should pay attention to, because it mobilizes
within us forces that will clarify the history of our present. Reminding us that the free market has always been more of an invisible handshake.
Robinson praises Hollywood for finally taking “an
unflinching look at slavery,” adding that it is “past time for the rest of the
country to do the same….. [And that the]
success of 12 Years a Slave may be a significant step toward our collective
liberation.”
I
called [slavery] the nation’s Original Sin because slave owners, including the
Founding Fathers, knew very well that they were sinners. Owning slaves was a
matter of economics — one could hardly be expected to run a plantation without
them — and personal luxury.
James
Madison called slavery “the most oppressive dominion ever exercised by man over
man” — but did not free the slaves he owned. Thomas Jefferson believed slavery
should be ended in the future — but continued to own slaves throughout his
lifetime.
Patrick Henry, who said “Give me liberty or give me death,” believed that
slavery was “evil” — but would not free the men and women he owned because of
“the general inconvenience of living without them.”
Robinson and Sunstein are worth reading today because both
push us to see beyond the surface, beneath the presenting conflicts designed to
distract and divide us, to see the relationship between structure and agency, to see how changing the way we think/talk about a
conflict (reframing, displacing one way of thinking about it with another)
cannot but have a powerful impact on outcomes.
For the average reader, hearing that new regulations in CA
will require eggs sold there to come from chickens with larger pens, the
presenting conflict is all we hear or think about…and that puts us at a
distinct disadvantage. Conflicts
compete. And presenting conflicts have
been made salient, publicized, in order to capture the attention of some
publics, mobilizing them to see and think and talk about politics in particular
ways.
Check out this very ordinary NPR story about the egg
regulation and you will see that ‘the rest of the story’ changes the meaning of
the entire story and reframes how we should think about politics, regulation,
power and subordination in this case and in general.
California Legislature passed a law requiring that all eggs
sold in California be raised in cages that are almost twice as large as most
chickens have now. Five other, egg
producing, states sued with the lobbyist for the pork industries in these
states taking the lead in pushing the states to sue.
The pork lobbyists are “worried that restrictions on cramped
pig stalls…may come next.” In an odd
twist on nullification, ultra-conservative Iowa Representative Steve King
recently tried to nullify the California legal effort by amending federal law.
But
a coalition of animal welfare organizations and environmentalists killed the
King amendment, according to Maxwell.
"They
couldn't win legislatively, so they're going to try a judiciary track to
pre-empt state's rights to regulate health and safety and animal welfare: King
amendment round two," says Maxwell.
Again…why is this not criticized as greedy plaintiffs seeking
a government handout through the litigation lottery? On the other hand, maybe this regulation is
severe over-reach, just not something farmer can do and make a profit, since
the cost of the larger cages is about one cent per egg? Except last year the United Egg Producers
(lobbyists for egg producers) partnered with the Humane Society to say ‘yes we
can.’
Jo
Manhart, with the Missouri Egg Council, says egg producers had agreed to a
uniform national standard with their old adversary the Humane Society. The
resulting Egg Bill drew lots of support but ran into a wall of opposition from
the meat industry.
"They
did not want this deal to go through because they felt it would affect them
later on, and I think it would," Manhart says. "So, that's
dead."
The
death of the Egg Bill, and the King amendment, set up the current lawsuit in a
U.S. District Court. And the ruling will almost certainly be appealed.
If we all read it the story about the presenting conflict,
and not the conflicts behind that to compromise (that were derailed by King and
now a lawsuit), we are likely to read the story as an illustration of crazy
government over-reach denying our freedoms, just as the storytellers intended.
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