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GOOD RULES
10 STORIES OF SUCCESSFUL REGULATION
JAMES LARDNER
 
ABOUT DĒMOS
Dēmos is a non-partisan public policy research and advocacy organization. Headquartered in New York City, Dēmos works with advocates and policymakers around the country in pursuit o our overarchinggoals: a more equitable economy; a vibrant and inclusive democracy; an empowered public sector thatworks or the common good; and responsible U.S. engagement in an interdependent world.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
James Lardner is a Senior Fellow at Demos and the author o many articles and reports on economic pol-icy. His report on credit-rating agency reorm advanced a proposal that was subsequently incorporatedinto the fnancial reorm measure enacted by Congress in June 2010. As a journalist, he has written orthe New York Review o Books, Te New Yorker, and Te Washington Post, among other publications. Hewas the co-editor o (and a contributor to)
Inequality Matters: Te Growing Economic Divide in Americaand Its Poisonous Consequences,
with essays by Bill Moyers, Barbara Ehrenreich, Miles Rapoport andamara Draut, among others. His most recent book, co-written with Jose Garcia and Cindy Zeldin, is
Upto Our Eyeballs: How Shady Lenders and Failed Economic Policies Are Drowning Americans in Debt 
.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Editorial assistance provided by Jake Wustner and Eric sytsylin. Invaluable eedback and support sup-plied by Michael Lipsky, Robert Kuttner, amara Draut, and Rena Steinzor.
 
10 STORIES OF SUCCESSFUL REGULATION 1
INTRODUCTION
In the school o brutally hard knocks, America has relearned something about the business world: it needsrules. When we let corporate and fnancial insiders decide large questions o right and wrong or themselves,we invite trouble. Te most devastating fnancial crisis since the Great Depression, the biggest mining disasterin our decades, and the worst undersea oil leak (and one o the worst environmental tragedies) ever havedriven that point home.Tis report documents another under-appreciated lesson o our national experience - that good rules and e-ective enorcement are within our power to achieve. It may be hard to look past the cascade o calamities; buti we make the eort (and turn down the volume knob on the cynical voices telling us to expect no better), amore hopeul story comes into view. Tat story is one o daunting health, saety, and environmental problemsovercome or eased by acts o ederal, state, and local rule-making; o measures that have saved lives, preventedsickness, empowered workers and consumers, spurred innovation, and advanced the common good.
HOW REGULATION CAME TO BE
Te United States was never, as some imagine, a land o unettered commerce. Proessional licensing, patentprotection, rudimentary building and zoning codes, lawsagainst the adulteration o meat, bread, and our – these andother orms o regulation go back to the days o the Foundersand beore. But there have been times, like our own, wheninnovation and new business practices and institutions got arahead o the rules.Aer the Civil War, the new technologies o oil, steel, rail-roads, and electricity, and the giant corporations in commando those discoveries, overwhelmed the simple (and mostly stateand local) regulation o the pre-industrial age. Out o that pe-riod o convulsive change came the frst great wave o modernregulation. It included measures addressing the unsanitary practices o the meat-packers; the price-fxing and secret deals o the railroads; the exploitation o child laborin garment actories, mines, and other gritty and dangerous felds; and the brute power o the huge industrialcombinations known as “trusts.”Victories did not come easily. Nor did they come rom on high, as edicts handed down by an elite. imeand again, the back-story o reorm involved ordinary citizens banding together to call or action, industriesresisting fercely (or trying to co-opt the process), and elected ocials responding slowly, oen only aer agalvanizing tragedy like the riangle shirt-actory fre o 1911, which led to passage o some o this country’sfrst occupational saety laws.Modern regulation arose out o crisis and struggle, but also, just as importantly, out o the momentum o accomplishment. By the middle decades o the twentieth century, Americans could look around and see anencouraging number o places where rules had been implemented and conditions had improved. Tis country’ssuccessul experience with regulating the meat industry inspired a similar approach to the chicanery o the old-time pharmaceutical world. Airline saety regulation provided a template or auto saety regulation.
1905: A Meat Packing Plant
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