Dear Government, Please Save Me

The FTC plans on regulating blogs to make sure that bloggers don’t have undisclosed conflicts of interest when reviewing products and services of other companies:

Many bloggers have accepted perks such as free laptops, trips to Europe, $500 gift cards or even thousands of dollars for a 200-word post. Bloggers vary in how they disclose such freebies, if they do so at all. But now the Federal Trade Commission is paying attention. New guidelines, expected to be approved late this summer with possible modifications, would clarify that the agency can go after bloggers — as well as the companies that compensate them — for any false claims or failure to disclose conflicts of interest.

Well, thank Zeus that the federal government is finally doing something about this. Thank you, FTC, for saving me from my own incompetence. For years I have been unable to discern intelligent, thoughtful, investigative journalism from worthless spam posts. But I believe you can, FTC! If there’s one thing I have learned about government in my lifetime, it’s that it is much more capable of figuring out this sort of thing than I am. And what more important topic is there than regulation of reviews done by Uncle Ed in Boca Raton in between his 4th and 5th daily trip to McDonalds?

Well, I guess there might be one topic more important: Ponzi schemes. No, not Social Security… I’m talking about the private sector version of the Ponzi scheme. It’s a good thing that the SEC was there to catch Bernard Madoff before he ripped off a bunch of rich folks.

Oh, wait, the SEC missed that one.

Perhaps you think I’m being unfair. The SEC can’t possibly oversee everyone and catch everything, right? Maybe the SEC just had no reason to be suspicious.

No reason, that is, except for all the people (from the free market) jumping in front of them waving their arms saying that something Madoff is doing is fishy and needs to be deeply investigated. You investigated and gave Madoff a clean bill of health, which led to more people feeling safe investing him and eventually being ripped off (perhaps you’ve heard of the term “moral hazard”).

But, thank you, federal government. The free market can clearly not regulate itself as well as you can. I can’t tell that the blog post I’m reading about Snuggies might be biased, and no one in the market could have seen the Madoff thing coming.

And, just to give the FTC something to do… I have done significant tests and have found that wearing a Snuggie significantly reduces the risk of cancer.

You’ll have to wait for the FTC to get around to to telling you whether that is a legitimate statement. In the meantime, why not buy two or three Snuggies just to be safe? Tell ‘em Matt sent you.

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