Regulation Quotes
The bill passed, but Jackson, true to his word, vetoed it.
His antigovernment views were so extreme that he even opposed having the government control poisonous and other dangerous consumer products and instead leave it to the free market where the consumer would have to make safety decisions often without information or worse with deceptively false information.
This is one of the best short quotations about the conflict between freedom and equality or fairness. Economically, if large companies and monopolies are totally free and unregulated, they often prey upon the small companies and consumers and the community in general. Regulation restricts the freedom of the regulated entities and inhibits investment and growth.
Kennedy had financed bootlegging operations and had himself been involved in many shady stock deals.
“Combination” was then a word for a large corporate enterprise, monopoly or trust. Although large corporations are common in the modern economy, at the time there were very few of them and most of them use their power to crush competition and take advantage of helpless consumer. Instead of banning largeness as some wanted to do, President Theodore Roosevelt and others chose regulation, and the Sherman Antitrust Act and the Clayton Antitrust Act were passed. Individualism in the form of small businesses have proved amazingly resilient and have developed into a giants like Microsoft and a Google. Over half a of the new jobs created in our economy are done so by small businesses.
FDR even admitted that very wealthy men and corporations controlled most U. S. governments including the administration of his own political party. Roosevelt did a great deal to improve the situation but by the latter years of the 20th century, private financial entities gained back much of the influence and control. The result was the Meltdown of 2008 and the Great Recession, where another set of regulations and laws (Dodd-Frank) was made law by the Obama Administration. However, the financial corporations still had enormous political influence as a result of unlimited campaign contributions to politicians and unlimited lobbying.
