The government in the marketplace

This great article got me to thinking about how government tries (and fails) to subsidize and regulate business. The government needs to be in the business of protecting and not so much providing. It is good at enforcing the law -- being a punisher of Madoffs -- but not so good at fixing things and solving everyone's problems. When gov't tries to solve problems in the marketplace, it:

A. screws up the market pricing with its (subsidized) alternatives

which in turn makes businesses, in their attempts to compete with government prices:

- take excessive risks
- decrease services
- lay off employees (which can be a downward spiral for the whole economy)

B. lulls more competent (private) watchdogs into thinking it is taking care of industry oversight "the gov't has this under control"

C. creates excessive burdens on employers who then have to spend money adhering to government-made (not market- or consumer-made) regulations rather than employing more American workers.

That's not even to get into the tax money wasted on regulation and subsidization. Nor have we considered all that government tries to do just to deal with the problems it creates (e.g. the unemployment benefits it pays to the people laid off when it screwed up the market pricing). If we did, this list of ills could go on forever.