We the Businesses of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Market, establish currency, insure domestic Competition, provide for the individual defense, promote the corporate Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Money to ourselves and our Shareholders, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America, Inc.

For millions of Americans, our Constitution might as well start with those words. In a culture as dominated by free market principles and individual freedoms as ours, it can be difficult to come up with a hard distinction between people and the businesses they create.

Undoubtedly, businesses and people are not actually treated the same in every aspect of life; for evidence of this, one need look no further than our right to vote, which no business or corporation in our nation has.

What distinctions exist might be eroding, though. In 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a controversial decision, famously referred to as the Citizens United case. In the court’s opinion, it states that corporations have a right to free speech and specifically, they have the right to air televised ads right up until an election.

Citizens United is merely one facet of a huge public outcry to remove government regulation from our hallowed free market. Regulation that, it is commonly alleged, kills jobs, moves businesses overseas, and too closely resembles Big Brother.

Advocates of the free market downplay the public concerns addressed by government regulation. Despite what might be contended by so-called conservative public awareness groups and media outlets, regulation of American industries is not a socialist plot to tear apart our freedom and family values.

Regulation of industries occurs for a variety of reasons, including public safety, worker health, consumer protection, and industry standardization.

Apparently unbeknownst to those who wish to abolish government intervention, businesses cannot be trusted to take any of these factors into account.

If it is profitable to pollute our land, water and air, businesses will do it. If it is viable to pay workers a wage they could not possibly live on, businesses will do it. If it is possible to form monopolies or trusts to squeeze every possible penny out of consumers, businesses will do it.

These are not blind assumptions. They have all happened before, and they all happen to this day.

Businesses that engage in such behaviors should not have the right to do so. If a business cannot be conducted without imposing harm on the unconsenting people of the United States, it should not be allowed to conduct business at all.

Imagine how ridiculous it would sound to defend an organized crime ring that murdered, stole and extorted citizens of their neighborhood. The only difference between that and defending businesses from needed government regulation is the crime ring injures individuals, while the business injures the public in general.

Hardly grounds for a reasonable defense.

Reasonable people, then, can probably agree that some form of regulation is needed, and that businesses, like people, should not have total and absolute freedom. The difficult part is deciding where that freedom should end.

That decision is made by a government being pulled from two opposing ends. At one end, government agencies or private groups have an interest in serving the people of the United States (or their bureaucratic, czar-loving, hippie friends, depending on your beliefs). On the other hand, businesses lobby to ensure that they will not be unduly burdened.

A recent example of that division is the new emission standards, to be released by the Environmental Protection Agency. The regulatory agency is proposing capping carbon emissions from newly built natural gas and coal power plants.

According to the EPA, these regulations are to combat climate change and America’s negative impact on the global environment. There is heavy pushback, however, from the industries to be affected, and an almost certain legal battle will soon commence. The argument will likely go that the regulations are unnecessary and will destroy the very fabric of our economy.

With two sides that cannot seem to agree on basic facts, who is the public to believe?

It is up to the people of the United States to decide: Should we believe someone who is employed to defend the interests of people of the United States, or someone who is employed to make their company as much money as possible?

Hard choice, huh.