“The airlines are responsible for carrying their cargo and their passengers. Why should we assume that a bureaucracy can do better?”

Ron Paul, R-TX, during the Republican debate at the Reagan Library.

I say go for it. And let’s not stop there:

—auto manufacturers never resisted seatbelts, airbags or antilock brakes (or fireproof gas tanks, or break away steering wheels, or … ), so I am sure they will spontaneously adopt new safety technologies going forward.

—the food and drug companies never put rat carcasses in sausages, or cocaine in “health pills” when they were unregulated, so I am sure they can be trusted to never do anything like that again.

—the financial markets have always been made up of sophisticated, self-interested investors who would never buy an interlocking set of mutually reinforcing investment packages that they actually didn’t understand, crashing the global economy as a consequence, so I am sure they’ll not do it in the future.

—manufacturers never used to make cribs that collapsed on babies’ heads, strangling them, or clothes that were fire hazards filled with toxic chemicals, so I am sure they’ll never do it in the future. The same can be said for food products, lead painted toys, etc.

I mean really—the market is perfectly self-regulating and all government ever does is wreck things.

Then again, if pigs had wings they might be able to fly.