The Senate passed a bill yesterday, voting 90-5, to regulate Credit Card companies from sudden interest rate hikes or hidden fees. This is one more major mistake by our government and another step toward socialism. Most of you will disagree with me. You will point to the ridiculously high rates charged by Credit Cards, by their unfair tactics of raising rates if you are just one day late in your payment and by charging you fees for things you still don’t understand. And you are right. Some Credit Cards are unethical and will try to fleece you. But whatever happened to buyer beware?Instead of you being responsible for your decisions, government is making those decisions for you by regulating yet another industry; all in the name of “protecting consumers”. At the same time Congress is dictating what Credit Card companies can do, the President was issuing orders regarding what car companies, those that are still left, can produce in the future. This order seems almost insane as the car industry in America is barely keeping alive manufacturing existing models. But now they are required to make major changes, which will mean massive revamping of designs and manufacturing of the new models, with extremely high costs which could surely swamp the existing American car companies. But again, this change is to protect you, the consumer, from real and imagined green house effects.
Based on the vote, it doesn’t appear that the Senate is concerned about voters disagreeing with the bill to regulate Credit Cards. I can only guess that this is because voters refuse to act responsibly. That’s the problem with real freedom. In a free society you don’t hand over your decision making process to the government; instead you take control over your decisions and ultimately your life. If you are unhappy with the rates charged by your Visa company there are enough competitors that you could find a Credit Card company offering better rates. But that means you need to do a bit of research or make some calls and then take action on your own to move your debt elsewhere. Of course the alternative is to not build up large Credit Card debt but that is probably asking too much of a person today. But people are too lazy or too irresponsible and are happy that Congress is taking care of the problem for them.
In a free capitalistic society, people would take action and leave a specific Credit Card company due to its high rates and fees or others wouldn't buy a specific car model because of its low MPH which would ultimately result in those companies changing its rates and updating its car models. But that isn’t being allowed to happen once government steps in to dictate what those rates and models must be. As soon as government makes those decisions for you then you have given up one more claim to freedom.
What you need to ask yourself today is "what industry will be next?". Now that people have willingly given government the right to take over and/or regulate entire industries, for the supposed sake of protecting the consumer, you know this is just the beginning. And it won't stop with big business. For just as the sun rises each morning, government, in its quest to "take care" of its citizens, will want to expand its control over all aspects of life.
Our freedoms are already under attack. There is free speech which has been severely limited due to political correctness and the ever despised 2nd Amendment which Washington has tried for years to suppress. The government will surely want to "protect" us from hate speech and gun violence so let's further restrict those rights, too. And who knows? Maybe religion is next on the list for doesn't differing religions create stress and violence? Therefore in order to take care of and protect the citizens why not take religion away, too? Imagine, that... So when will you wake up and say "Stop!" And on the day you realize what you have lost, will it be too late to change the bleak world that will be America without the freedoms we are so casually giving away.
