An (almost) Converted Liberal

Being the open-minded guy I am, I've been reading some of the Tea Party information and, once you exclude the really bizarre and/or overtly racist rhetoric, there are some pretty appealing ideas. The idea of a smaller, less intrusive Government and lower taxes really interests me but I've got a problem that I can't figure out how to solve.

In recent memory we've seen several fiascos that were caused, primarily, by the greed and arrogance of individuals and companies, to wit:

- The Bernie Madoff ponzi scheme,
- The financial meltdown/derivatives-caused recession,
- The BP Gulf oil spill.

And I won't even mention all the e-coli and salmonella problems we've had.

The SEC should have been all over addressing and preventing the first two issues and the Minerals Management Service should have prevented the third (and the FDA the food issues). But the SEC didn't have enough folks to police all the Madoffs or folks savvy enough to understand the derivatives mess and the Minerals people were just corrupt and/or drug-addled. So this would seem to argue for more government regulations and regulators, right?

But we already had regulations and regulators and, frankly, there's no way we could ever have enough regulators to stop all the greed and arrogance in the US.

The President's Health Care bill is what seems to have really sparked the Tea Party movement, but again (and I can say this as someone who worked in the Health Care industry for years) many of the reasons that caused the bill to be necessary were caused by the Health Care industry itself.

So, here's my problem: how do we control the greed and arrogance (and subsequent screwing of individuals, companies and the environment) while also shrinking the government, its intrusiveness and the taxes required to support it?

The only answer I can come up with is as unsavory as the current predicament - more lawyers. I know, I know, but hear me out.

In a perfect world deregulation would lead to lower prices and better products but we don't live in a perfect world so many times we get higher prices (via hidden fees), and faulty and sometimes harmful, or deadly, products.

So, in the real world, deregulation doesn't really work - all it does is allow greed and arrogance to run rampant. In other words, unfortunately, we can't just expect people to do the honorable and decent thing.

What if the punishment for being arrogant and greedy was so severe that people felt compelled to do the decent and honorable thing?

We can either spend billions of dollars on making regulations, hiring government operatives and attempting to ride herd on every transaction we make every day or we could simply beat the tar out of folks who we find take advantage and wrong others.

Would the Tea Party support an army of lawyers whose job would be solely to prosecute and brutally punish the greedy and arrogant, in lieu of thousands of pages of regulations and thousands of regulators, in order to protect the American Public?

Would you?