Steven Greenhut: Free Markets Are More Important Than Safety Regulations
The armies of regulators who have descended on the remnants of the exploded fertilizer plant in West, Texas have yet to determine a cause, but that has not stopped left-wing opinion-page editors, cartoonists, and lawyers (several lawsuits have been filed already) from jumping to conclusions about what is to blame there while also calling for more government controls. One thing we do know, writes Steven Greenhut, is that the most useful ways to improve health and safety stem from competition and from market-based checks and balances—not from armies of indifferent regulators or from the creation of paperwork-producing bureaucracies more interested in self-preservation than innovation.