Of course they aren’t going to open their big bazoos because the tragedy is a perfect example of why their “philosophy” (I resort to scare quotes because I hardly consider their ideas worthy of a philosophy) is so weak — and weak-minded.

What the anti-regulation crowd will ignore (at least until the tragedy passes from the all-too-brief memory of the American public) is that, what minimal regulations were in place were largely ignored by Massey Energy.

In fact, Massey Energy was cited 58 times over the last year — of which Massey has paid only 16 percent of those fines. Furthermore, Massey CEO Don Blankenship is on the record saying that safety rules governing mines were “difficult to comply with” and “nonsensical,” apparently figuring that 29 lives were worth a few million dollars in cut corners and skirting the rules set forth by regulators.

In 2007, most of us (except the big bankers) felt the sting of deregulating our financial system: pensions decimated, retirement accounts made worthless, foreclosures, plummeting home values, millions unemployed — all due to an industry, stripped of safety measures, and allowed to play a vast game of Monopoly with our money.

Not their money — our money.

Blankenship, on the other hand, played his game with other people’s lives, and lost.

Everytime I’m forced to share air with an anti-regulation advocate, the matter of what our country looked like a hundred or so years ago comes up. Children working for pennies a day, adult workers in peril of grievous injury or death on a daily basis, poison in foods, toxins passed off as medicine, garbage poured into the air and water ... the list in almost endless. It’s then that they usually respond that, well, things were different then but the markets have matured and business wouldn’t do anything to put our country or its people in peril.

Oh really?

The events of the last week and the last three years would seem to put the lame-brained notion of deregulation to bed but, like a bad penny or acid reflux, the argument keeps coming up.

So, the next time I’m in the company of one of those anti-regulation simpletons, I think I’ll ask, “How many lives is a cheaper electricity bill worth?”

Hopefully, a lot, lot more than their two cents.