That Interfering Government

Watching the first episode of Mad Men re runs last night, I had to laugh out loud at the scene where tobacco company executives meeting with the creative staff of the advertising agency. The tobacco company CEO is fuming (both figuratively and literally--everyone smokes all the time on Mad Men--it's 1959). The government has forbidden the makers of cigarettes from advertising the health benefits of cigarettes. A plethora of studies have linked smoking to lung cancer and heart disease. But the CEO of the cigarette company does not want to believe those studies. He wants to believe the studies coming out of his own research institute. "We set up that whole research institute, funded it, it cost us a lot of money," said the CEO, "To prove cigarettes are good for you, or at least not bad."

As Upton Sinclair once observed: "It is difficult to bring a man to understanding, when his salary depends on not understanding."

Same is probably true in the global warming debate today.

Which is to say, the company funded research to find the results which would be good for business.

Those government "intruders," are intolerable, he says. It's going toward communism, right here in the USA, all these government regulations to prevent profitable companies from making profits.

It was all vaguely reassuring, to think big business rich people have been complaining about government regulators cutting into their profits for decades. The song Mitt Romney and Ron Paul and Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich are singing has been sung for decades.

But that doesn't make it any truer.