Much of the blame for the mortgage lending meltdown has been placed on the "failure of the free market." But is there really any truth to this? The financial industry is the single most regulated industry in the economy. The failing institutions are precisely the ones that New Deal policies were meant to protect us from: the FDIC was supposed to prevent bank runs, the SEC was supposed to be stop shady investments, Fannie May and Freddie Mac were supposed to make sure that loans went to people who deserved them.

Opportunistic politicians are quick to blame the capture of regulatory institutions on lobbyists and "special interests." They promise to fix the problem by giving yet more money and power to corrupt government agencies, much like a mob boss who blames his enforcers for his protection schemes, and then promises his victims to lay off them if they just give him more guns and money.

The only reason that special interests are so involved in government is that the government has ingrained itself so deeply in our lives. Giving more power to the state to regulate markets and redistribute wealth and privileges from one group to another only increases the incentive to strengthen one's political connections.

From http://oneminute.rationalmind.net/designer%20babies/

Genetic screening via sexual selection has been practiced since the dawn of life itself. No one suggests that we should pick a mate entirely at random, so the objection to genetic screening and engineering is due to the element of technology. Their objections are not to "designer babies" as such, but to the use of technology to improve the lives of human beings. They apply equally to a child whose genes are altered after birth, or to an adult. The logical conclusion of this neo-luddism is the opposition of all man-made improvements to human life as "unnatural."

Ooops, I got my Slashdot threads mixed up. I blame Firefox.

From http://oneminute.rationalmind.net/designer%20babies/

Genetic screening via sexual selection has been practiced since the dawn of life itself. No one suggests that we should pick a mate entirely at random, so the objection to genetic screening and engineering is due to the element of technology. Their objections are not to "designer babies" as such, but to the use of technology to improve the lives of human beings. They apply equally to a child whose genes are altered after birth, or to an adult. The logical conclusion of this neo-luddism is the opposition of all man-made improvements to human life as âoeunnatural.â

That is an interesting interpretation of "law" - any action a business takes must not go against the decision of some future court which rules that said action violated some non-specified standard of "anti-competitive" behavior. Such a standard is not "law" but arbitrary, dictatorial whim.

Actually, most tropical forests create more CO2 than they consume by releasing it when the biomass rots.