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Perhaps not more, but faster and perhaps more thoroughly in order to change the player's risk assessment. By the time these companies are called out they amass

Perhaps not more, but faster and perhaps more thoroughly in order to change the player's risk assessment. By the time these companies are called out they amass huge war chests and tie these things up in the courts for years while enriching their investors and management teams. Then, when the hammer falls, that company disintegrates on some level and, often, these management teams spread to similar companies and do it all over again. Obviously, something is not working. When something is not working the answer is almost never 'let's keep things the same and hope it turns out better.'

jerf 11y ago
My point is "Let's write more regulations" is "let's keep things the same and hope it turns out better". It's easy to call for more regulations but it sounds a lot more to me like the core problem is a priority mismatch in enforcement. A lot harder to fix, but certainly step one seems to me to be to get people to stop calling for "more" regulation and start calling for the core problem of ineffective regulatory agencies to be addressed. Betcha if you took a look at what the relevant agencies were doing with their time instead of dealing with this, you'd be less than pleased.
- clavalle 11y ago
  I've seen these kinds of things up close (investigations and eventual prosecutions of exploitative companies in the health care sector) and I can absolutely tell you I am not pleased. But I also don't see the alternative. I don't think a free market approach would work. The government has a huge standing war chest. It can afford to take the time and expense to go after these bad actors. Even insurance companies are rightfully reluctant to take on very expensive, risky litigation and/or investigation that could run into multiple years or even decades. The market is a wonderful tool, but it can't solve all problems. Some problems are so big that it takes the pooled resources of, essentially, everyone to fight against it.
  - jerf 11y ago
    I didn't say anything about a free market. I said, go fix the regulating agencies. Way harder. I'm a libertarian, but I'm not an "anarchist" because I still think it makes more sense to have an industry, and an independent, focused, effective regulatory apparatus. When you fall prey to the regulatory apparatus' ploy to gain more power with yet more "regulations" by responding to their failures to use existing regulations to fix problems, you A: play a part in letting these sorts of failures slip by B: reward the regulatory apparatus' failures, creating more incentives for them to fail later and C: give them another vector to "fail" and need "more power" to fix their failures in the future. You want regulations to work, stop falling for this obvious ploy and start holding your government servants responsible for the failures they are already abundantly equipped with the tools to solve, instead of playing the sap and joining in with the voices calling for more power, exactly as they want. They've got enough to handle this problem. Go take them to task, don't hand them more power even as they are demonstrating their manifold inadequacy to be given even what they have.

jerf 11y ago

My point is "Let's write more regulations" is "let's keep things the same and hope it turns out better". It's easy to call for more regulations but it sounds a lot more to me like the core problem is a priority mismatch in enforcement. A lot harder to fix, but certainly step one seems to me to be to get people to stop calling for "more" regulation and start calling for the core problem of ineffective regulatory agencies to be addressed. Betcha if you took a look at what the relevant agencies were doing with their time instead of dealing with this, you'd be less than pleased.

clavalle 11y ago
I've seen these kinds of things up close (investigations and eventual prosecutions of exploitative companies in the health care sector) and I can absolutely tell you I am not pleased. But I also don't see the alternative. I don't think a free market approach would work. The government has a huge standing war chest. It can afford to take the time and expense to go after these bad actors. Even insurance companies are rightfully reluctant to take on very expensive, risky litigation and/or investigation that could run into multiple years or even decades. The market is a wonderful tool, but it can't solve all problems. Some problems are so big that it takes the pooled resources of, essentially, everyone to fight against it.
- jerf 11y ago
  I didn't say anything about a free market. I said, go fix the regulating agencies. Way harder. I'm a libertarian, but I'm not an "anarchist" because I still think it makes more sense to have an industry, and an independent, focused, effective regulatory apparatus. When you fall prey to the regulatory apparatus' ploy to gain more power with yet more "regulations" by responding to their failures to use existing regulations to fix problems, you A: play a part in letting these sorts of failures slip by B: reward the regulatory apparatus' failures, creating more incentives for them to fail later and C: give them another vector to "fail" and need "more power" to fix their failures in the future. You want regulations to work, stop falling for this obvious ploy and start holding your government servants responsible for the failures they are already abundantly equipped with the tools to solve, instead of playing the sap and joining in with the voices calling for more power, exactly as they want. They've got enough to handle this problem. Go take them to task, don't hand them more power even as they are demonstrating their manifold inadequacy to be given even what they have.