Ron Paul and Consumer Protection

I saw Ron Paul interviewed at Google the other day. One thing he mentioned struck me. He was asked about something to do with the role of government in consumer protection, and he suggested that the private sector would do a better job of that than the government.

It hit home for me more today. On my Albany Lawyer blog, I've done a few posts about fraudulent lawyer websites.

Here in New York, the court system recently modified the rules regulating lawyers and specifically addressed lawyer websites. I opposed the new rules (though they're not that bad), and one of my concerns was that the Committee on Professional Standards (that regulates lawyers) does not have the power to regulate others, so non-lawyers can create websites pretending to be lawyers and the Committee can't stop them.

I complained about one of the fraudulent websites. They forwarded my complaint to the New York Attorney General (I got a cc) and I got a letter from the AG saying that they got my letter and would put it in their file.

I think Ron Paul's approach to consumer protection just might be a bit better than that.

Then again, I did complain to Google about allowing one of these fraudulent sites to advertise on Google AdWords, and have received no response. So maybe the private sector is not so reliable. Hmm.