With the economic troubles that began in 2007, and especially now with a national political campaign underway, there is an intense focus on wrongdoing. Every newspaper, it seems, now has an editor in charge of exposing wrongdoing.
There is a visible desire to punish wrongdoers. A desire to stop wrongdoing.
Quite naturally people say: Let's prohibit it; regulate the behavior of bankers and oil drillers and others; make bad behavior illegal. That'll stop the bad guys.
Then the political debate takes over. We argue about who should be regulated and who shouldn't -- assuming that regulation is in the public interest because, of course, bad behavior should be stopped.
In the process, we skip over the question of whether regulation can be effective. Maybe it can. Maybe not. Perhaps it depends. Let's see.
Years ago, for a nickel at a book sale in a barn, I picked up a lesson about that: a copy of Chester Barnard's "The Functions of the Executive," signed by the author, an executive at Jersey Bell Telephone. The book became a classic in business management and political science.
Authority, Barnard said, resides in the person to whom an order is given.
That's startling. Normally we say the person "in authority" is the one who issues the order. Yet all the time we see what Barnard meant.