VEA Vice Chair Nell Minow responds to President Trump’s initiative to roll back federal regulations to the 1960’s.

I’m a passionate supporter of the free market, an entrepreneur who has helped start four successful companies, and an advocate for shareholders as the foundation of capitalism. But there are some things the free market cannot do and some problems the market cannot fix. Only the government can resolve an issue if the obstacle to optimal solutions is collective choice, externalizing costs, or informational asymmetry. What that means, for example, is that the free market will never solve the problem of a manufacturer dumping toxic chemicals into the lake the community uses for water, fishing, and swimming or the air the community uses for breathing because there is no way, absent government involvement, to make the company pay for the damage it causes.

Source: This is What Would Happen if We Rolled Back Regulations to the 1960’s | HuffPost