Fred Smith Jr. writes . . .

Worth a read and reflection. Smith writes:

With the existence of private property, government is forced to step into the economic realm under which private property is created and traded. Therefore, herein lies the one of the greatest roles for government: Protecting people’s rights, particularly our property rights, and maintaining our collective faith in the system that has made this country stand out across history.

This is exactly why crimes like those of Bernie Madoff are amongst the worst: They destroy people’s faith in honest commerce. It is this loss of faith that produces the ever-increasing calls for regulation.

But unless the regulators collectively represent some radically upgraded collective of character as compared to the rest of us — the people being regulated — we should expect failures in regulation as frequently as we see failures in the marketplace.