Political Economy Commons^™

Government Versus Market Regulation: The Nanny State Or The Liberal State, Warren Coats

Warren Coats

The nanny state world is characterized by a growing list of regulations and government supervision of business in an effort to fix the most recently observed problems. The price of such protection is the increased cost of doing business, which tends to crowd out small businesses and favor large ones, which can more easily absorb the compliance costs. The benefit is often difficult to detect. Has Dodd-Frank really made it feasible to fail our largest banks (now larger than they were just before the Great Recession), i.e. are they no longer too big to fail?

The self-governing, liberal state—"Liberalism unrelinquished"—is …