Why we have rules

Photo from: www.theodysseyonline.com

Most people are not fans of rules. Rules are often restrictive and sometimes intrusive. Due to the restrictive nature of rules, many ask the question as to why we even have them in the first place. As we already discussed, regulations serve as the rules the government imposes on businesses and people through the executive branch. They tell us what we can or can’t do. Although many view regulations as restrictive they do serve a purpose in our society. Regulations are put in place to protect what a society views as valuable, such as the environment, health, or consumer and worker rights.

Without federal regulations, us citizens would probably face some difficult challenges because the regulations that are in place to protect us would be gone. As the Washington Times, a popular US newspaper, puts it “try to imagine a government without regulations… what do you think would happen if we had no food and drug administration to tell us what was safe to consume? No financial regulators to protect us from bank failures and financial scams? No health and safety regulators to protect us from unsafe products?” Federal regulations have successfully protected the public from potential dangers, whether it has been stopping potentially dangerous drugs from entering the market, to protecting us from losing money in hard economic times. So, whether we like them or not regulations are necessary.

Overall, regulations do serve a purpose in our society. Regulations are good at protecting valuable parts of a society, by keeping its citizens safe from any sort of danger. This is evident through their protections of the environment, our health, and the rights of workers and consumers. However, there is still a growing debate on if regulations are beneficial to society, which means that we will have to take a look at both the positives and negatives of regulations to draw a conclusion on what role the government should play in the economy.