Subtitle: Lack of control drives people to demand more of the law.
From a WSJ editorial discussing the blame game calls for more regulation following the breakdown of the financial system:
So why blame deregulation and small government? The social psychologist Gustav Jahoda says that unreasonable beliefs often arise in circumstances where people lack control and need to believe in something to get them through a highly stressful situation.
At this point, when people call for more regulation, they are believing that more law is the answer (a highly unreasonable belief indeed!).
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2 responses to “More on the Wall Street Deregulation Debate…”
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We know the Law isn’t the answer for our human situation, but we also know it’s good for us, right? I am curious…How do we navigate the balance in establishing human political, social, and economic systems that are just and good and beautiful and of the Kingdom (1st use) while not heaping even more law upon people that they will ultimately rebel against? How do we hope for and move towards fairness and justice in how we structure the parameters of our economic system while not believing it will solve the problem of our nature? I think that hope (in what Christ has done, is doing today, and has promised to complete) has a role in the conversation. I am very interested to hear others’ thoughts.
Kate- all really good questions and thoughts. You are certainly right that there are laws that are necessary in order to keep the world spinning. And it is right to be thinking about how our laws can be fair and just. Alan Greenspan, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve, just came out today and said that he was “partially” wrong expecting the markets to regulate themselves and that he should have tried to regulate the CDS market. Greenspan was once considered the “infallible maestoro” and I actually remember saying several times myself (once pathetically in a college interview)! The expectations on the regulators and regulations are so high and the current troubles have not diminished those expectations! There is no way for the regulations or regulators to live up to the public’s expectation. I think you are right that this does not mean that we aren’t supposed to do away with all governing laws, but the idea that new regulation will cure the current crisis or prevent all future crisises is simply too high a view of regulation and the regulator.